A while ago, someone suggested to Wassermann that he take some tDCS machines to a nearby university and wire up half the students in a classroom before they took a test. Would the battery-powered kids do better? ”I thought the ethics of that sort of application were questionable, because you don’t want to advantage people who can afford something” that others can’t, Wassermann says.
Of course, these machines could be as cheap as clock radios or coffee makers. So arguing about the ethics of brain-pods might be an exercise in futility; if tDCS turns out to produce strong effects, the machines will pop up everywhere, whether we like it or not. “It’s an interesting phenomenon, if this were an effective treatment, to have it get completely loose,” Wassermann says. “I’m not excited enough about [tDCS] as a panacea or a great social evil at this point to be very worried. But if it were very potent, it will be all over the place. The Chinese would flood the market with gizmos. This could get completely out of control. It could be like blogging. Everybody could be a brain manipulator.”
Related:
Flashbacks: March 3, Kramer: No one knows if Americans are overmedicated, Goodbye Prozac, More 
- Flashbacks: March 3
These selections, culled from our back files, were compiled by Chris Brook and Jessica McConnell.
- Kramer: No one knows if Americans are overmedicated
Action Speaks! its current focus on freedom with a look at the introduction of Prozac in 1987 and how it accelerated the tendency to treat mental illness with medication.
- Goodbye Prozac
This article originally appeared in the March 1, 1996 issue of the Boston Phoenix.
- Windows
In the weeks leading up to the start of the college tour, I fell into one of my depressions, and with it some strange and disconcerting new sensations presented themselves.
- July 27, 2007
There’s a certain kind of manic-depressive character who adores the full moon.
- Soldiers committing suicide
On July 22, 2004, unable to handle the intensity anymore — the daily vomiting, the feeling that he was a murderer — Lucey wrapped a garden hose around his neck and hanged himself.
- Betting your brain
It's no surprise that it feels good to win money.
- Lockdown
If you were a reporter and you received a letter like the one excerpted below, what would you make of it? Lance Tapley discusses reporting the prisons
- An insult to justice
Portland Phoenix freelancer Lance Tapley was given the Maine State Bar Association's Excellence in Legal Journalism Award last week at the association's annual meeting.
- State sued over inmate’s death
As severely mentally ill Maine State Prison inmate Ryan Rideout prepared to hang himself from a sprinkler in his cell on the night of October 5, 2006, other inmates frantically pressed panic buttons in their cells.
- Letters to the Portland Editor, February 3, 2006
Readers fire back on Baldacci's re-election plan, MCLF, and Maine's prison reform
- Less
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Lifestyle Features
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, Health and Fitness, Harvard University, Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Harvard Medical School, Sciences, Mental Health, Food and Drug Administration, Economic Development, Economic Issues, Less
