Performance-enhancing drugs

No, I am not talking about steroids or Vi@gra. I am talking about Rit@lin (i.e. methylphenid@te). During my early graduate school days (many years ago) I took several of my classes in the Medical School with the first and second year students. I learned then that many of them were taking Rit@lin to aid in concentrating for long periods of time.

Truly, I could see the allure. The amounts of information they were required to memorize was massive. Study sessions occurred every evening and lasted 4-5 hours (on top of the full day of attending classes). I counted myself lucky that I was only taking a few of the classes that they had to take.
But the question that was, and still is, being raised was “Is it ethical to take a non-medically necessary, performance-enhancing drug to perform better in school?” Proponents argued that:
1) it helped them to learn the material better and therefore would become better doctors, and
2) the side effects were minimal and unlikely to hurt them over the long term. Opponents countered with:
1) it was illegal to take unprescribed medicine, especially for an off-label use,
2) there was a “risk of developing dependence” and therefore, when they stopped taking it after medical school, they ran the risk of actually becoming “worse” doctors, and
3) taking drugs to increase study power meant that the drug-takers would make better grades, thereby driving up the grade curve for the rest of the class.
Personally, I think that the opponents viewed the skewed grade-curve effect as the most important, simply because it was the most harmful to themselves.

I didn’t take sides. But, from a purely scientific point of view, it would be interesting to see how many of the top 5% (vs. the bottom 5%) of any graduating medical class tested positive for this “performance-enhancing drug”.
And I wonder how many of those people are still having to take it during their medical practice?

Why am I thinking about this so many years later? Because I seem to have the attention span of an ADD’ed 6 year-old today. Popping a pill to gain some focus doesn’t sound so criminal right now. But don’t worry, I won’t go toodling over to the Med School across the street to try and score some Rit@lin. I have no cash and I don’t think they take credit cards.