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Comment by nnq | Hacker News Reader

Dexedrine is sooo last century! Can't wait to hear about Borne Legacy [1] like things like using viruses to fix/improve one's genes. Though considering the rightful medical uses of such technologies, having them and keeping them secret considering military applications would kind of count as... genocide!

The worst thing of this bio-enhancement arms race will probably be that dozens of technologies with medical applications that could save millions of lives will end up being kept secret due to their military applications. This could be the true main cost of such an arms race!

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bourne_Legacy_(film)#Plot

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I stopped reading when they exaggerated the effects of the amphetamines given to the pilots. It's unfortunate that accidents happen during war, and actually that war happens at all.

But if I were a pilot having to fly over 10 hours, you bet I'd take amphetamines too. Unless they can fit an espresso machine in the cockpit.

There is a drug called modafinil, is not an amphetamine in the strict sense of the word but it can keep you awake for many hours, is used to treat narcolepsy and its already being used in the military.

...and a pretty darn good study-for-exams enhancer, some say :)

> not an amphetamine in the strict sense of the word

It's not an amphetamine in any sense of the word. Scientists were hesitant to even call it a "stimulant" at first.

It also does not have aggression inducing effects, or a lot of the other negative side effects of amphetamines.

Also known as Provigil. It has some serious side-effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modafinil#Side_effects and requires a prescription in the US (Schedule IV controlled substance). However adrafinil is currently unregulated in the US, and your liver will metabolize it into modafinil with a half-life of about 1 hour.

4500 mg single dose don't kill a human (recommended dose is 200mg); strong side-effects are an exception and not the norm.

I know side effects are the exception but they exist, even at normal doses. From the PDF linked from wikipedia: "Common side effects that can happen in anyone who takes modafinil tablets include: •back pain •headache •nausea •feeling nervous •stuffy nose •diarrhea •feeling anxious •dizziness •upset stomach •trouble sleeping"

Visions of planes with sponsored by starbucks on the back made me chuckle. But I'm all for sending them too the front line.

Though with planes now, easier to replace have a remote pilot and with that can easily change and negate that entire issue. Or combination of the two with sleep detection alerting a remote pilot to take over with a remote control pilot ability. Certainly one when a fighter pilot ejects in training and can moral feel safe that a remote pilot can fly the plane away from the populus impacting landings.

Where's the exaggeration? All I see is a direct quote from the pilot (who may or may not be exaggerating how he felt), and the FDA warning. Seems like perfectly good reporting to me.

> The Food and Drug Administration warns that Dexedrine can cause “new or worse aggressive behavior or hostility.” (.pdf) But the Air Force still blamed the pilots.

It's not an FDA warning, it's the FDA being quoted out of context, then implying that it wasn't the pilot's fault because he was on said drug.

Think for a second about how many other pilots were probably also prescribed modafinil.

Truly, it is the pilot's fault. I think it was a freak accident, though. However, not an accident that was probably directly caused by modafinil.

Gene therapy has limited use, but some success stories already https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_therapy#2007 and is advancing slowly but surely without government funding :)

...and it's slow to develop or even dream to sometime gain approval for using this for enhancing because of two big side-effects: 1. virus induced immune responses gone awry, and 2. cancer - any-time you copy/paste things around the genome you risk knocking off a tumor suppressor gene or turn up the expression of an oncogene (this is basically a show-stopper for Bourne-like largescale genome editing, and if you read about the first gene therapy trials you'll find out about leukemia in patients - even a 1% risk of inducing cancer would be too much, and if you try and do things like gene therapy to slow aging that percent will go up...)

Anyway, the point was that a breakthrough eliminating either (1) or (2), that could act like an accelerator or catalyst to the whole field of research, could happen in a military research program and stay "under lock" for decades instead of all benefiting from it as a result of such a worldwide bioenhancements cold-war...

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