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© Erin JonassonComing soon ... a pill to enhance moral behaviour.
It may sound like something out of a science fiction plot, but Oxford researchers say that modern conventional medicine is gradually developing ways to change the moral states of humans through pharmaceutical drugs, and thus control the way people think and act in various life situations. These new drugs will literally have the ability to disrupt an individual's personal morality, and instead reprogram that person to believe and do whatever the drug designer has created that drug to do.

"Science has ignored the question of moral improvement so far, but it is now becoming a big debate," said Dr. Guy Kahane from the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics in the UK. "There is already a growing body of research you can describe in these terms. Studies show that certain drugs affect the ways people respond to moral dilemmas by increasing their sense of empathy, group affiliation and by reducing aggression."

While this may sound good in theory, mind control is already a very dangerous side effect of existing drugs. Take the antidepressant drug Prozac, for instance, which has been known to cause those taking it to lash out in violent rages. One young boy murdered his father by beating him and stabbing him in the head, and hit his mother with a crowbar and stabbed her in the face, shortly after starting to take Prozac

But the kinds of drugs Kahane and his colleagues are referring to imply designer drugs specifically designed to not only alter one's mental state, but also to change the way that person thinks about situations from a moral perspective. The end result is literally a type of drug-induced mind control where human subjects will be controlled by someone else, and unable to make conscious decisions for themselves.

Research on the subject, of course, tries to paint the idea of mind-control drugs in a positive light, suggesting that they could be used to help make the world a better place. Just imagine less violence, more trust, and more love, they say. This rhetoric, though, is really just a ploy to further numb the already mind-numbed masses into accepting the idea as a good thing.