Could a pill make soldiers' MINDS stronger? Drug may boost resilience on the battlefield - and prevent post-traumatic stress disorder.

Published: 10:27 pm, 2 October 2014.

Source: Sarah Griffiths for mailonline.

Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2777626/Could-pill-make-soldiers-MINDS-stronger-Drug-boost-resilience-battlefield-prevent-post-traumatic-stress-disorder.html

Science field: Medical science (experiment).

Summary:

A pill or nasal spray containing a natural stress-relieving chemical, called neuropeptide Y, could help survivors of traumatic events recover from stress faster and become less fearful and anxious. This drug can also make soldiers more resilient in battlefield situations.

Glossary:

-         Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): a psychological condition, characterized by anxiety, withdrawal, and a proneness to physical illness that may follow a traumatic experience.

-         Fearful: feeling fear, dread, or apprehension; anxious.

-         Resilient: recovering quickly and easily from illness, misfortune, troubles…

-         Cope: to struggle on fairly even terms or with some success.

-         Mock: deliberately pretended, as for demonstration purposes.

-         Noradrenaline: a hormone secreted by the adrenal medulla, increasing blood pressure and heart rate, and by the endings of sympathetic nerves, when it acts as a neurotransmitter both centrally and peripherally.

-         Prone: having a natural tendency toward something.

Review:

This news has two point of views, there’s one positive and another one negative. The positive thing about this drug is that it can help people recover from a stressfull event that can destroy your life and your family’s life. This drug can make recover people faster and more easy who had a traumatic experience. Also, if it’s applied to soldiers before battle it can make them stronger and resilient to face the terrible acts of war. But the negative opinion of this news is that it’s normal to suffer stress and post-traumatic disorders after surely killing in the battlefields. Wouldn’t removing such emotions dehumanize them? Feel fear and being anxious in and after war are feelings that makes us human and people should feel them on those situations. Because if not soldiers could become killing machines, super soldiers without human emotions. Instead we could teach and support them better how to cope with such emotions during war.

Another point is that they are now experimenting with soldiers. Soldiers who have had the pill with this stress-relieving chemical and they are subjected to mock interrogations and other scary situations to cause a stress-traumatic experience to prove that the chemical works. I’m against such experiments, because you can’t force someone to have this traumatic experience just to prove its effectiveness. It also means to cause to that person a terrible experience, like torture…

 

 

 

Written by Rebeca Mees