We all have painful memories we have to live with. Some are as common as losing your girlfriend, and others are far more traumatic, like watching your best friend have a bullet put through him during war. If these are traumatic enough, disorders such as post-traumatic stress syndrome can prey on these memories. Such disorders are often difficult to treat.
According to a recent study a drug taken just after a traumatic event or while recollecting the event can erase the memory from the brain. Some obvious questions come to mind. Does it work? Can it be a useful treatment? What about the possible side-effects? How about potential for abuse?
A drug known as propranolol treats hypertension, but it also has the effect of weakening the memory of a traumatic experience when given right after it happens. New research from McGill university suggests that it may also act in a retroactive way -- if it is given ten years after the event while a subject is recalling traumatic memories it abates the emotional content of the memory while leaving the factual content intact.
Another drug has shown to entirely remove a single memory from rats while leaving everything else intact. I don't have much detail on the study, so I don't know exactly how it was conducted, however this was their conclusion.
The question that needs to be answered before the drug is ever manufactured on a large-scale is its potential for abuse. Could it be used as a tool for debriefing by the military? Surely that goes far beyond the power of the government. Your memories are sacred, and nobody but you should be allowed to alter them. It may not even be worth making the medicine.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10806799/
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