In a previous post, I linked to a very interesting eight-part series by Slate's William Saletan on memory, particularly the work of Elizabeth Loftus. The most recent entry references my article on memory dampening and some work by Loftus and colleagues on people's attitudes toward memory dampening. Here's an excerpt:
In 2002 and 2003, studies indicated that another drug, propranolol, could prevent or reduce post-traumatic stress disorder in humans. Adam Kolber, a law professor at the University of San Diego, monitored the research and talked to Loftus about its legal and moral implications. She was fascinated. She went back to her lab determined to get involved. She started with attitudinal research, asking people whether they would take a memory-dampening drug after being mugged and beaten. Nearly half wanted the right to take the drug, but only 14 percent said they would do it. She was surprised. If she had endured such an assault, she decided, she would take the drug. [Emphasis added.]
Though the article only provides one tidbit from this fascinating research on people's attitudes toward memory dampening, it is a very interesting tidbit. Why do only 14% say they would use the drug? It would be interesting to compare that number to the percentage of people who were approached in actual emergency room studies and invited to participate in studies of propranolol. Offhand, I don't know the numbers. But I suspect the participation rates in some of those studies exceeded 14%. If so, that would be a noteworthy result.
You might think that the percentage of people who would use an agent that is proven effective (as I assume the hypothetical agent was said to be in Loftus's studies) would exceed the percentage that would agree to participate in an experiment testing a novel application of a drug whose efficacy is unclear. Of course, you can't easily compare people's responses to a survey about a hypothetical drug to their responses to real-life queries in an emergency room. We also don't know how people's rates of use would change in a world where memory dampening is more common.
Did researchers survey attitudes toward antidepressants before we had pharmaceuticals (or at least modern pharmaceuticals) to treat depression? I'd be surprised if there is much published research on the matter, though pharmaceutical companies may well have done so privately. Either way, I'm sure attitudes toward pharmaceuticals in general have changed a lot since then. I wonder, though, what percentage of people would have said that they would use these hypothetical antidepressants. I bet the percentage would be lower than the rates of actual use of antidepressants today by those who are offered them by their doctors. Perhaps somewhere there is an advertising executive specializing in direct-to-consumer marketing who is thinking: "We'll know how to raise the memory dampening numbers above 14%! [Insert mischievous laugh.]"
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