This is either really good or extremely bad–as in Manchurian Candidate mind control stuff. I guess I tend to see the glass half-empty on this, but on the other hand, I know I carry around a lot of thoughts that do me no good. What would I do if I could get rid of them? Hmmmm. But that’s thinking selfishly…what if I could make large amounts of other people forget specific things?
Maybe our man in Iraq, whose writing I look forward to, might “need” this kind of treatment upon his return to normal society. Maybe this is some government project with him and all his brothers in arms in mind…:
Wipe out a single memory
news@nature.com, Mar. 11, 2007
A single, specific memory has been wiped from the brains of rats, leaving other recollections intact, using a drug known to cause limited amnesia (U0126).
Greg Quirk, a neurophysiologist from the Ponce School of Medicine in Puerto Rico, thinks that psychiatrists working to treat patients with conditions such as PTSD will be encouraged by the step forward. “These drugs would be adjuncts to therapy,” he says. “This is the future of psychiatry — neuroscience will provide tools to help it become more effective.”
Here’s the link to the story.
