Huxley's Brave New World Becoming a Reality? An editorial by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a mental health watchdog
November 29, 2006
On Sunday, November 26, 60 Minutes aired a story on a drug heralded as a panacea for traumatic memories. Harvard psychiatrist Roger Pittman is experimenting with a high blood pressure drug to “trick” brains into “permanently disconnecting” from painful memories. These controversial studies were condemned by the President's Council on Bioethics, which issued a report stating that, “Our memories make us who we are…rewriting memories pharmacologically risks undermining our true identity.”
The drug is called Propranolol—it blocks adrenaline and is approved for use for high blood pressure but is also widely used by psychiatrists for phobias and other symptoms of “mental illness.” After learning of a study where rats were injected with Propranolol to blunt their memories, Pittman proposed that human memory could also be manipulated with the use of this drug. One of the test subjects, Louise O'Donnel-Jasmine, said, “There is no way I can access the emotions anymore…It's like they went in and altered my mind. It's creepy.” The reporter, Lesley Stahl, admits that it is not normal to have gone through a traumatic event and feel nothing.
Next summer, according to the 60 minutes segment, the United States Army will be funding Pittman's further experiments with this drug. The new test subjects will be American soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus, the army will be funding experiments using psycho-pharmaceuticals to alter the memories and emotions of soldiers.
Scary? It should be.
In 1967 a group of prominent psychiatrists and doctors met in Puerto Rico and predicted that this Brave New World drug would be produced as part of a plan that, according to participating psychiatrist Nathan S. Kline, would “see a developing potential for nearly a total control of human emotional status, mental functioning, and will to act.” Kline seriously suggested putting antipsychotic drugs in the drinking water.
There was an incentive. Psychiatric drugs that control emotional and mental functioning today are now a $27 billion a year industry.
In what could well have been a sequel to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World—only the psychiatrists stressed the plan wasn't science fiction—manufactured “intoxicants” would create the same appeal as alcohol, marijuana, opiates, and amphetamines, producing “disassociation and euphoria” and future drugs would “provoke or relieve guilt” and manipulate memory to remember or forget what you want.
The subsequent book on this conference, “The Use of Psychotropic Agents in the Year 2000 by Normal Humans” was inspired by the recreational use of hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD in the 60s, where thousands “turned on and tuned out”—not unlike the antidepressant quick fix culture we live in today.
In a section of the report, titled, PROBABLE FUTURE ALTERATIONS OF LIFE PATTERNS BY DRUGS, it was predicted that drugs would be produced to:
- Prolong or Shorten Memory
- Produce or Discontinue Transference [the redirection of feelings and desires towards a new object]
- Provoke or Relieve Guilt
- Shorten or Extend Experienced Time
The following are quotes from the book “The Use of Psychotropic Agents in the Year 2000 by Normal Humans”:
“[O]ur present breadth of drug use may be almost trivial when we compare it to the possible numbers of chemical substances that will be available for the control of selective aspects of man's life in the year 2000.” [Preface by Nathan S. Kline, psychiatrist]
“Those of us who work in this field see a developing potential for nearly a total control of human emotional status, mental functioning, and will to act. These human phenomena can be started, stopped or eliminated by the use of various types of chemical substances. What we can produce with our science now will affect the entire society.” [Introduction]
The influence of pharmaceutical companies then was clear: “[M]ajor efforts were initiated by the pharmaceutical industry to look for new chemical substances which would have mind-altering properties. Further, the military-industrial symbiants [a mutually beneficial relationship between two groups] began to sponsor projects to produce chemicals which could disrupt the will of an enemy to fight without damaging his body.” [Introduction]
“Safe, rapidly acting intoxicants that produce satisfactory dissociation and euphoria would be most valuable. The appeal of alcohol, of marihuana, of opiates, amphetamines, etc., is due at least in part, to the fact that they do possess some degree of such activity. However none of them serves ideally for the purpose. It is quite likely that if acknowledgment were given of the desirability of such a pharmaceutical that it could be produced within a matter of a few years at most.” — Page 79 (Compare the effects of SSRI antidepressants)
“Man is one of the few creatures in whom sexual activity is not seasonal. Pharmacological regulation of some aspects of this behavior banking the fires or stoking them biochemically…would increase the sum total of pleasure and at the same time allow man to devote more of his time, intelligence and energies to more exclusively human activities.” Page 80 (Viagra)
“How much remarkably more rich life would be if we were able to remember whatever we wished. On the other hand, how terribly cruel if we could not forget those things we had seen or done which were unbearable. We are close enough to understanding how memory works to expect that within another decade such agents could become a reality.” — Page 81 (Propranolol)
“At other times an undeserved and unwarranted feeling of guilt can ruin an entire life and even those of others touching it. There is already evidence that this can be done pharmacologically in respect to anxiety which may well be an important component of guilt. Some interesting ethical and legal problems arise so that if such a drug is perfected it may be that a board consisting of a judge and a clergyman as well as a psychiatrist would have to agree that such relief of guilt was justifiable before appropriate medication is given.” Page 82 (Propranolol)
With each new addition to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, psychiatry's billing bible, more “mental disorders” are voted into existence. Subsequently, there are more excuses to drug normal behavior and emotions. David Magnus, director of Stanford University's Center for Bioethics, interviewed in the 60 Minutes piece, denounced the use of Propranolol for emotional blunting stating, “From the point of view of a pharmaceutical industry, they're going to have every interest in having as many people as possible diagnosed with this condition [post traumatic stress disorder] and have it [Propranolol] used as broadly as possible.”
Psychiatry's “new tool” is in the works—a drug to “erase” parts of a person's past by blocking the emotions connected with memories, and the pharmaceutical industry could reap in untold billions from this new cash crop.
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) was established in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus, and has since been successfully investigating psychiatric abuses and bringing them to civil, criminal and legislative account. CCHR denounces the use of this drug, Propranolol, by psychiatrists and others to wipe out portions of a person's memory and lessen their awareness. CCHR has produced a publication entitled, “Psychiatry: Hooking Your World on Drugs” which unveils the destructive power of hooking the population on mind-altering drugs, a movement that is already well underway. Contact CCHR's Media Department at 800-869-2247 or humanrights@cchr.org.
