A little known drug prescribed for stage fright is already evoking moral questions.
If you could take a pill that helped you forget a horrible incident in your life, would you take it? As reported on 60 Minutes last week, correspondent Lesley Stahl asked just that question. The answer, "yes" resounded. Propranolol (pro-PRAN-oh-lol) has been on the market for many years, originally as a beta blocker for chest pain. It also has been prescribed to jittery performers for stage fright. Researchers James McGaugh, professor of neurobiology at the University of Irvine and Roger Pitman of Harvard believe it may be just what the doctor ordered.
Propranolol works by blocking nerve cells in the brain. Sounds like your everyday anti-depressant, but it’s not. Propranolol blocks adrenaline, according to McGaugh and Pitman, it’s adrenaline that produces Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The connection is simple. When Alzheimer’s patients are injected with adrenaline, studies have shown these patients experience moments of clear memory. Propranolol does the opposite.
“Propranolol sits on that nerve cell and blocks it, so that, think of this as being a key, and this (PTSD) is a lock, the hole in the lock is blocked because of propranolol sitting there. So, adrenaline can be present, but it can’t do its job.” (James McGaugh, 60 Minutes CBS News Corp.)
Memory, according to 60 Minutes researchers, holds an unexpected discovery. Likened to Jello, memory takes time to solidify, while this solidification process may take days, weeks and even years, these researchers learned that memory can be manipulated to be stronger or weaker. Perhaps that is why we tend to remember the bad things that happen to us, regardless of how many wonderful experiences we may have had.
Roger Pitman read McGaugh’s studies. “When I read about this, I said, ‘This has got to be how post-traumatic stress disorder works.’ Because think about what happens to a person. First of all, they have a horribly traumatic event, and they have intense fear and helplessness. So that intense fear and helplessness is gonna stimulate adrenaline,” Pitman said. “And then what do we find three months or six months or twenty years later? Excessively strong memories.” PTSD figured out? Or not?
David Magnus, director of Stanford University’s Center for Biomedical Ethics believes that proranolol is dangerous because he believes it will be used for the most trivial reasons. According to Magnus, “Our breakups, our relationships, as painful as they are, we learn from some of those painful experiences. They make us better people.”
Many viewers were outraged by the suggestion of any medication that would alter memory and agreed with Magnus. Clearly, many people believe that every memory, both traumatic or pleasant make us who we are; shapes our personalities and to alter that is considered unnatural and in some cases immoral. The U.S military does not agree.
Major research funded by the military, will begin late this summer using propranolol on American soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. This research which is still in the preliminary stages, is not ready for general use. Hopefully, in the end these poor souls will receive relief.
