This week's question is what scientific field I would study, "if time and money were not obstacles." Since I'm not a real scientist - just a science writer - I'm not quite sure how to answer this. I worked for several years in a neuroscience lab, and if I hadn't studied neuroscience I probably would have ended up trying to understand RNA. (Why RNA? Because it does so many inscrutable things, and has been second fiddle to DNA for way too long...In fact, the whole field of epi-genetics strikes me as ripe with promise.)
But I'm going to interpret this question a little differently. I'm going to ask myself what scientific enigma I would study (and hope to solve) if "time and money were not obstacles." My answer to that question is the biology of drug addiction. I won't bother with all the statistics documenting the horrible toll drug addition and alcoholism wreak on our society. (The last government study, done in 2001, estimated the annual cost at $143.4 billion.) But the real reason I would study drug addiction is that I think addiction might actually be a curable condition, ripe for a transformative solution. After all, we have a pretty good understanding of how the dopamine reward pathway works, and it doesn't seem all that farfetched to have a drug that might inhibit it. Furthermore, it now seems that most addictions - from gambling to sex to heroin - all use a similar cortical loop. So if we ever came up with a pharm cocktail that made smoking and cocaine uninteresting, we would also put Las Vegas out of business, not to mention the Taliban. And if I woke up tomorrow, and suddenly had the patience and intelligence required of a good bench scientist, I would start reading up on dopamine, Wolfram Schultz and methamphetamine...
Comments (5)
So if we ever came up with a pharm cocktail that made smoking and cocaine uninteresting, we would also put Las Vegas out of business, not to mention the Taliban.
Not to mention most other stimulating activities.
Posted by: daksya | June 10, 2006 2:16 PM