Bad memories, should we erase them?

[Ace Pace]

Something proposes to do just that.

Thanks for the Memories ... Whatever They Were
07.19.07 | 2:00 AM

The painful end to a passionate love affair can take months, even years, to recover from. Sometimes you never really get over it. Not entirely.

The death of a loved one can produce the same scars. So can being the victim of a particularly vicious crime, one that constantly replays itself in your nightmares.

They're horrible things to endure.

But they're also the things that, searing as the pain may be, remind you that you're a living, sentient being. The pain and sorrow of life, and how you deal with their effects, is part of what fuels your humanity. It's part of what lets you continue growing throughout that life, part of what gives you wisdom in your old age.

Now science is on the verge of wiping that out.

A study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research reports that researchers at Harvard and Montreal's McGill University are getting good results from propranolol, a drug used in the treatment of amnesia, that appears to block, if not completely remove, bad memories on a selective basis.

The drug was tested using 19 victims of various kinds of trauma, including accidents and rape. Some subjects were given propranolol, others a placebo. Researchers say that in those receiving the drug, the biochemical pathways that serve memory were disrupted sufficiently enough to dull, if not erase, the most painful recollections.

You can argue that if science is capable of doing this, then people shouldn't have to remember terrible things at all. It's a tempting notion, a siren song, no doubt about it. But is it ultimately healthy? I'm no shrink and I have no answer. But I think it's worth asking the question.

Did the postman ring twice while your wife was at home and now they've fled to Capri, leaving you with the kids and the mortgage? Take one of these pills, man, and forget about it.

Hell, if that was me I'd like to forget it.

But my gut tells me that there would be unintended, and probably undesirable, consequences. It tells me that this might be one of those times, like Dr. Frankenstein's attempt to reanimate life, when science is pushing around in dark corners where it shouldn't go. It's a view that I know many Wired News readers, besotted as they are with Vin du Technologie, do not share.

Is there an ethicist in the house?

Or am I making too much out of this human-experience thing? Maybe erasing all unpleasantness is just what Dr. Feelgood ordered, the perfect metaphor for a new world that a surfeit of technology is helping to forge: one lacking in passion, empathy … just plain humanity.

Like anyone who has lived a life, I've got my share of baggage, some of it better forgotten. But if offered a pill tomorrow to make all the bad stuff miraculously disappear, I'd turn it down. I may not like the pain of remembering, but I know it's a part of who I am.

Without it, I'm just a Stepford wife with a chemical lobotomy.

Besides, if I really want to forget, well … as Bogie says in Casablanca, "It's nothing that a little bourbon and soda couldn't fix."

[Lord of the Abyss]

Well, it seems to me this is the sort of question that calls for judgment, not some blanket ban OR people erasing bad memories at a whim.

I recall an article some years ago about a woman who suffered so much emotional trauma in the Holocaust that she's been insane ever since; she can't even talk, because she kept screaming so long she destroyed her voice. She could have used some traumatic memory erasure.

On the other hand, I can also see some self indulgent idiot erasing every bad memory they are allowed to and never learning from his mistakes or developing any sort of emotional toughness because of it.

So, I'd basically treat it like powerful painkillers; you give it to the people who are suffering more than they can handle, but you use something less drastic for lesser trauma. You don't want to eliminate all emotional pain any more than you want to eliminate all physical pain, and so similar reasons. Self preservation, and learning from one's mistakes. On the other hand, I don't think there's some sort of moral virtue in leaving someone incapacitated, whether by physical pain or emotional trauma.

[Morilore]

A somewhat less bullshit article from webMD.com

Forget Something? We Wish We Could
'Therapeutic forgetting' helps trauma victims endure their memories.
By Jeanie Lerche Davis
WebMD Feature

Remorse. Heartbreak. Embarrassment. If we could erase memories that haunt us, would we? Should we? Scientists who work with patients suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are developing a new science that has been called "therapeutic forgetting."

But by erasing traumatic memories, are we changing the person? Are we erasing capacity for empathy?

Last year, the President's Council on Bioethics expressed concern that "memory numbing ... could dull the sting of one's own shameful acts ... allow a criminal to numb the memory of his or her victims.

"Separating subjective experience of memory from the true nature of the experience that is remembered cannot be underestimated," says the Council's report. "Do those who suffer evil have a duty to remember and bear witness, lest we forget the very horrors that haunt them?"

The research community is divided on this issue. "I think there's an ethical concern," says Mark Barad, MD, professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. "It's hard to estimate what's important about a memory, how the memory interacts with who we are, how it affects our ability to empathize.

"Philosophically, I'm on the side of extinguishing fear rather than blocking memory," Barad tells WebMD. "Given my experience with people with PTSD, we're talking about a very severe downside to blunting memory."

After all, would Holocaust survivors wish to blunt their memories? Would that be good for society? Or should people have the freedom to decide if they want horrible memories softened?
The Birth of Trauma

James McGaugh is a pioneer in the neurobiology of learning and memory. He directs the Center for Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California at Irvine.

For several decades, he has performed numerous animal and human experiments to understand the processes involved in memory consolidation. He believes strongly in the work being done to help people suffering from PTSD.

An event becomes a strong memory, a traumatic memory, when emotions are high, he explains. Those emotions trigger a release of stress hormones like adrenaline, which act on a region of the brain called the amygdala -- and the memory is stored or "consolidated," explains McGaugh.

Current studies have focused on a drug called propranolol, which is commonly prescribed for heart disease because it helps the heart relax, relieves high blood pressure, and prevents heart attacks. "Hundreds of thousands, millions of people take this drug now for heart disease," he tells WebMD. "We're not talking about some exotic substance."

Studies have shown that "if we give a drug that blocks the action of one stress hormone, adrenaline, the memory of trauma is blunted," he says.

The drug cannot make someone forget an event, McGaugh says. "The drug does not remove the memory -- it just makes the memory more normal. It prevents the excessively strong memory from developing, the memory that keeps you awake at night. The drug does something that our hormonal system does all the time -- regulating memory through the actions of hormones. We're removing the excess hormones."

Acting Fast to Forget

The first to treat PTSD patients with propranolol was Roger K. Pitman, MD, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He'd just as soon forget the term "therapeutic forgetting."

"We think of PTSD as an exaggeration of the emotional response to trauma," Pitman tells WebMD. "Something so significant, so upsetting, so provocative has happened that there has been a rush of stress hormones, the hormones that act to burn a memory into the brain, to the point that the memory becomes maladaptive. Our theory is that the adrenaline rush is burning the memory too deeply."

Timing is critical. Once PTSD has developed, it's too late to change stored memory, says Pitman. "It's important to intervene soon enough to affect memory consolidation."

In his study, Pitman gave propranolol to emergency room patients within six hours of a traumatic event. He found that six months later they had significantly fewer signs of PTSD.

"It's not that they couldn't remember the accident," McGaugh explains. "They couldn't remember the trauma of the accident. They didn't have as many symptoms of PTSD. It's a very important distinction."

Making Sense of Trauma

Propranolol was used to treat PTSD, with fairly good success, in a small study treating sexually abused children. It's also prescribed for specific phobias like public speaking, says Jon Shaw, MD, a PTSD expert and director of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Miami School of Medicine.

The drug "erases the acute emotionality of the situation so people can function," he tells WebMD. "It's the "deer in the headlights phenomenon. The intense emotionality paralyzes and interferes with the memory-integration process."

When someone has been exposed to trauma, "the more intense the emotion is, the more fragmentation there is in the memory," Shaw explains. "They don't have a realistic, coherent narrative of what happened. Some aspects are heightened, others are diminished. They're left with an overwhelming sense of the event, yet they can't really piece it together, so they can't really achieve mastery over it. They lose their rational ability to understand it."

Propranolol could be used to "immunize" someone against trauma only in a minority of cases, says Pitman. "We can't use it in combat because soldiers need adrenaline to fight. But if they have just returned from a terrible battle, and they're traumatized, then it has potential application."
The Ethical Concerns

McGaugh has no problem with this use of propranolol. After all, "every pill that goes into your body does something to change you," he tells WebMD. "Antidepressants, antipsychotics -- all of these are designed to help people function better. Society crossed that bridge years ago."

He offers a more graphic example: If a soldier is wounded on a battlefield, is he left to suffer so that he can learn from that experience? "Imagine it: Do you just let him lie there and bleed to death because he needs to suffer the consequences of having killed another human being in battle? We give him first aid, pain medication, we do everything can. But if he's having an emotional disturbance because of that trauma, we can't do anything about that because that would change the nature of who they are. Doesn't losing a leg change the nature of who they are?"

Yes, there's possible downside to propranolol, McGaugh tells WebMD. "There is a chance that another memory could be affected. If the person gets a call and learns that they have a new grandchild during that time, they might not have quite as strong an experience of that news. Everything comes with a small price. But these are not amnesia pills."

But can a pill take away remorse? "That's silliness," says McGaugh. Will college men rape women students because they don't feel remorse? "Good grief. We're not talking about failing to remember what happened. We're talking about a drug that could prevent memory from taking over your existence, as PTSD does.

"We have people from World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, still living with the horrors of that remembered trauma. If you asked any of these people if you would want to have PTSD or not, what do you think their answer would be?"

Published April 9, 2004.

Emphasis added.

[Morilore]

plebe edit: gah, link

[TithonusSyndrome]

Y'know, this raises some interestin' philosophical quandaries. They should make a movie out of it, and cast that nice Jim Carrey in it.

[Patrick Degan]

Dammit, Bones, you're a doctor. You know pain and guilt can't be taken away with the wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away. I NEED my pain!

[Bounty]

The first article sounds like someone's been watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

[Morilore]

Okay, let's summarize:

- If you give this drug to trauma victims within six hours of some trauma, they get less PTSD.
- It doesn't work after PTSD has developed.
- It doesn't erase the recollection of the event.

So the original article:

A study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research reports that researchers at Harvard and Montreal's McGill University are getting good results from propranolol, a drug used in the treatment of amnesia, that appears to block, if not completely remove, bad memories on a selective basis.

The drug was tested using 19 victims of various kinds of trauma, including accidents and rape. Some subjects were given propranolol, others a placebo. Researchers say that in those receiving the drug, the biochemical pathways that serve memory were disrupted sufficiently enough to dull, if not erase, the most painful recollections.

Is just a bunch of "OMG science is playing God and destroying our humanity LOL" bullshit. But it seems even WebMD needed to pretend there was some massive ethical debate here, so they spent half the article discussing the ethics of what this pill specifically does not do.

[Julhelm]

I guess it all comes down the fact that even if some of my memories are bad, or even traumatic, they are still an important part of what defines me as an individual. Having them erased would erase part of me.

[Durandal]

Hell no. Bad memories keep my libido in check.

[Mr. T]

To the thread title question;

You know I was thinking about this very question a few weeks ago, and what triggered it was this. A thread about a mother who was gang raped and then the gang rapists forced her son to rape her as well.

So my line of thinking is that in extreme cases such as the above, I really don't think any good would be served by not having the mother and the sons memory wiped of the entire incident and both would probably have better adjusted lives as a result of it.

However in the case of not so extreme cases of "trauma" such as someone who has been feeling alot of pain over their girlfriend or boyfriend breaking up with them, I'd definitely say no to a memory wipe. This is because the experience might actually help them grow as a person.

I think the most important thing to consider above all is time. In the case of the mother/son rape, it likely took place over the course of less than half an hour and is very traumatic, so nothing is lost by having their memory wiped and quite alot is gained. However in the case of a failed relationship, or perhaps even an abusive childhood, to wipe out one's memory of the entire experience would also wipe out anything and everything else you learned or experienced during that time, which for what should be obvious reasons isn't really practical even if the trauma caused by it is still very real.

[TC Pilot]

Such technology should be outright banned and any research made in the subject eradicated. It is too easy for such a technique to turn into something far more horrible, should it fall into the wrong hands (i.e. criminals or the government).

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Such technology should be outright banned and any research made in the subject eradicated.

Destroy the knowledge! Fuck veterans!

[Lord of the Abyss]

Such technology should be outright banned and any research made in the subject eradicated. It is too easy for such a technique to turn into something far more horrible, should it fall into the wrong hands (i.e. criminals or the government).

"If you outlaw mind wipes only outlaws will have mind wipes !"

More seriously, that wouldn't work. You outlaw it here, it'll be developed elsewhere ( assuming it is possible, of course ), or developed illegally or in secret. And the more our knowledge of the brain advances, the easier any such discovery would become.

All your idea would do is make sure that it can't be used for good purposes.

[Darth Wong]

Such technology should be outright banned and any research made in the subject eradicated. It is too easy for such a technique to turn into something far more horrible, should it fall into the wrong hands (i.e. criminals or the government).

Yes! Destroy ideas the old-fashioned way, with guns!

[Wyrm]

Such technology should be outright banned and any research made in the subject eradicated. It is too easy for such a technique to turn into something far more horrible, should it fall into the wrong hands (i.e. criminals or the government).

Fuck you and all of those morons who didn't read Morilore's article. Propranolol does not erase memories. No drug known can erase a memory that is already formed, and I very much doubt it's even possible. All known ways to impair memory formation via drugs is to impair all cerebral activity, period. And we already do that routinely with anesthesia. What propranolol is block stress hormones from acting on the brain, and thus turn the memory into serious fucking business.

Think about the adaptative value of stress hormones inducing PTSD — if a memory is being formed at the time that stress hormones are in my bloodstream, then it's likely that memory has something to do with the stress I'm under. In that case, I'd better pay serious attention to that memory, and maybe link in some primal-fear responses to it and anything like it. Therefore, memories become more intense when they are formed in stressful times.

In PTSD, the stress involved is extreme, and the memory and fear-responses formed similarly extreme, and the fear response passes in this case from useful adaptation to a maladaptive bad trip. By blocking the serious stress hormones released during such times from affecting the strength of the memory, propranolol prevents this maladaptive response.

Now, once more:

NO MEMORY IS ERASED! PROPRANOLOL CANNOT BE ABUSED THIS WAY!

Not to discourage discussion of a drug that could do this... it's just not the drug under discussion.

Anyway, this is very cool news, as it may prevent the psychological trama associated with war and severe accidents. This is a good thing, not the insidious tool of the mind control dystopia you're making this out ot be.

[TC Pilot]

Destroy the knowledge! Fuck veterans!

"Remember that war crime you just committed?"
"Yes."
*ZAP* "Move out, soldier."

"Sure is nice to have completed your tour of duty, isn't it?"
"Sure is."
*ZAP* "Welcome to the army."

More seriously, that wouldn't work. You outlaw it here, it'll be developed elsewhere ( assuming it is possible, of course ), or developed illegally or in secret. And the more our knowledge of the brain advances, the easier any such discovery would become.

Perhaps you are not familiar with words like "ban" and "eradicate". I am not speaking from a practical, realistic standpoint. I am simply making my own opinion of the subject of the thread known.

Yes! Destroy ideas the old-fashioned way, with guns!

That is certainly better than having ideas wiped from human consciousness irrevocably.

Fuck you and all of those morons who didn't read Morilore's article. Propranolol does not erase memories. No drug known can erase a memory that is already formed, and I very much doubt it's even possible.

Fair enough, let's look at what the article says:

The painful end to a passionate love affair can take months, even years, to recover from. Sometimes you never really get over it. Not entirely.

The death of a loved one can produce the same scars. So can being the victim of a particularly vicious crime, one that constantly replays itself in your nightmares.

They're horrible things to endure.

But they're also the things that, searing as the pain may be, remind you that you're a living, sentient being. The pain and sorrow of life, and how you deal with their effects, is part of what fuels your humanity. It's part of what lets you continue growing throughout that life, part of what gives you wisdom in your old age.

Now science is on the verge of wiping that out.

A study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research reports that researchers at Harvard and Montreal's McGill University are getting good results from propranolol, a drug used in the treatment of amnesia, that appears to block, if not completely remove, bad memories on a selective basis.

The drug was tested using 19 victims of various kinds of trauma, including accidents and rape. Some subjects were given propranolol, others a placebo. Researchers say that in those receiving the drug, the biochemical pathways that serve memory were disrupted sufficiently enough to dull, if not erase, the most painful recollections.

Emphasis mine.

And, if I recall correctly, the subject head to this thread is "Bad memories, should we erase them?".

[defanatic]

I guess it all comes down the fact that even if some of my memories are bad, or even traumatic, they are still an important part of what defines me as an individual. Having them erased would erase part of me.

So, even if you were an insane, gibbering wreck in a mental asylum, you'd still want to remember the traumatic experience that made you that way?

[Morilore]

Jesus FUCKING Christ, you're a goddamn idiot.

Yes! Destroy ideas the old-fashioned way, with guns!

That is certainly better than having ideas wiped from human consciousness irrevocably.

Even if there was a scientifically plausible way to erase human memories...

Explain why. Seriously.

Fuck you and all of those morons who didn't read Morilore's article. Propranolol does not erase memories. No drug known can erase a memory that is already formed, and I very much doubt it's even possible.

Fair enough, let's look at what the article says:

The painful end to a passionate love affair can take months, even years, to recover from. Sometimes you never really get over it. Not entirely.

The death of a loved one can produce the same scars. So can being the victim of a particularly vicious crime, one that constantly replays itself in your nightmares.

They're horrible things to endure.

But they're also the things that, searing as the pain may be, remind you that you're a living, sentient being. The pain and sorrow of life, and how you deal with their effects, is part of what fuels your humanity. It's part of what lets you continue growing throughout that life, part of what gives you wisdom in your old age.

Now science is on the verge of wiping that out.

A study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research reports that researchers at Harvard and Montreal's McGill University are getting good results from propranolol, a drug used in the treatment of amnesia, that appears to block, if not completely remove, bad memories on a selective basis.

The drug was tested using 19 victims of various kinds of trauma, including accidents and rape. Some subjects were given propranolol, others a placebo. Researchers say that in those receiving the drug, the biochemical pathways that serve memory were disrupted sufficiently enough to dull, if not erase, the most painful recollections.

Emphasis mine.

And, if I recall correctly, the subject head to this thread is "Bad memories, should we erase them?".

The opening article was full of shit. Let's look again at a source from someone who isn't prone to PLAYING GOD hysteria and who doesn't call himself "The Luddite:"

Current studies have focused on a drug called propranolol, which is commonly prescribed for heart disease because it helps the heart relax, relieves high blood pressure, and prevents heart attacks. "Hundreds of thousands, millions of people take this drug now for heart disease," he tells WebMD. "We're not talking about some exotic substance."

Studies have shown that "if we give a drug that blocks the action of one stress hormone, adrenaline, the memory of trauma is blunted," he says.

The drug cannot make someone forget an event, McGaugh says. "The drug does not remove the memory -- it just makes the memory more normal. It prevents the excessively strong memory from developing, the memory that keeps you awake at night. The drug does something that our hormonal system does all the time -- regulating memory through the actions of hormones. We're removing the excess hormones."

Emphasis added, motherfucker.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Destroy the knowledge! Fuck veterans!

"Remember that war crime you just committed?"
"Yes."
*ZAP* "Move out, soldier."

"Sure is nice to have completed your tour of duty, isn't it?"
"Sure is."
*ZAP* "Welcome to the army."

Arguing that stuff that's impossible shouldn't be allowed is fun, but it has absolutely fucking nothing to do with either my argument, or the drug in the first place. As per DR6, I demand that you provide evidence that this drug can do what you suggest it can in your preceding post, namely, make someone forget war cimes commited or his entire term of service.

[TC Pilot]

Jesus FUCKING Christ, you're a goddamn idiot.[/qupte]

You're funny.

Even if there was a scientifically plausible way to erase human memories...

Explain why. Seriously.

The threat or use of force in suppression of an idea, belief, idealogy, oreintation, etc. is both crudely ineffecient, but also historically ineffective. Such a technology or drug, were it ever to exist, has the ability to alter a person on a fundamental level that violence can almost never accomplish. The insidiously evil potential of this its ability to both efficiently and effectively brainwash a person lies in both undermining the core of any person - akin to one's soul - and the capacity for any number of crimes, atrocities, and abominable actions to be perpetrated from a moral and legal standpoint without any justice or punishment.

The opening article was full of shit. Let's look again at a source from someone who isn't prone to PLAYING GOD hysteria and who doesn't call himself "The Luddite:"

I apologize for not noticing the article that you posted before I posted my opinion. You can cease your hysterics now. Please consider my first post to be in regards to the original article and thread title, rather than in response to the actual effects of propranolol on memory.

Arguing that stuff that's impossible shouldn't be allowed is fun, but it has absolutely fucking nothing to do with either my argument, or the drug in the first place. As per DR6, I demand that you provide evidence that this drug can do what you suggest it can in your preceding post, namely, make someone forget war cimes commited or his entire term of service.

Before you degenerate into further overly belligerent foolishness, consider that I posted originally in response to both the thread subject and first posted article, which was about the potential for memory-erasing drugs.

[Wyrm]

Even if there was a scientifically plausible way to erase human memories...

Explain why. Seriously.

The threat or use of force in suppression of an idea, belief, idealogy, oreintation, etc. is both crudely ineffecient, but also historically ineffective. Such a technology or drug, were it ever to exist, has the ability to alter a person on a fundamental level that violence can almost never accomplish. The insidiously evil potential of this its ability to both efficiently and effectively brainwash a person lies in both undermining the core of any person - akin to one's soul - and the capacity for any number of crimes, atrocities, and abominable actions to be perpetrated from a moral and legal standpoint without any justice or punishment.

TC, you realize that any such drug-induced memory-erasure would have to be done one victim at a time, do you not? You do realize you'd have to erase each memory individually with those drugs, do you not?

You know, just like guns?

The difference being is that with a headshot, you're assured the idea is gone from this particular victim.

I apologize for not noticing the article that you posted before I posted my opinion. You can cease your hysterics now. Please consider my first post to be in regards to the original article and thread title, rather than in response to the actual effects of propranolol on memory.

<ker-snip>

Before you degenerate into further overly belligerent foolishness, consider that I posted originally in response to both the thread subject and first posted article, which was about the potential for memory-erasing drugs.

I'm looking at the time you posted your spew, which was at 6:54 pm today.

Morilore's was posted 8:21 am the previous day.

You had a full fucking thirty-six hours to read through the thread in its entirety.

Twit.

[TC Pilot]

The difference being is that with a headshot, you're assured the idea is gone from this particular victim.

Oh yes, because killing someone is clearly just as easy and inconsequential as administering a drug.

Do you have anything better than tripe?

[Lancer]

TC, even if you had posted concurrently with Morrilore, a cursory examination of the first article should have told you it was bunk. You have about as much standing as if you were arguing based upon an article from the Onion.

[TC Pilot]

I suppose you're right. I'll chalk it up to a combination of lack of sleep and an apparently annoying habit from an unrelated forum and content myself with simply answer the question in the thread title.