The BBC posted an article a while back, announcing, “Trust drug may cure social phobia.” Arguably, this article may be jumping the gun a little in terms of efficacy of the product, but the BBC does tend to be pretty good with this type of stuff, and the headline does include the important word may. However, I’m not interested in discussing the efficacy or plausibility of this product; rather, I want to talk about the underlying message behind products such as these.

The thing I love about science is the same thing many people hate about it. Not only do we try to find the solutions to problems, but we also solve things that we didn’t know used to be problems. Up until now, many people would become shy and nervous in social settings and that would be dismissed as just the way things were. Now, along comes a group of scientists who they tell us that we can change the way we interact with each other by taking a drug. I find this brilliant, and while it may not be as amazing a discovery as a cure for a disease, or a more efficient way of producing crops to feed the world population, these types of discovery - ones that change the perceived status quo - are still pretty amazing in their own right.

Why do I believe this drug (and others’ like it) to be an amazing discovery? It all begins with understanding evolution. Many people believe that there was some type of divine power or guiding force responsible for our development as a species, and that we (and nature) are a certain way for a certain reason. While evolutionary forces like natural selection do tend to guide evolution in a certain way, it does so in a haphazard manner. The result is that there are a lot of artifacts and quirks in our physical and mental make-ups that aren’t necessarily meaningful or even beneficial. Furthermore, as our society develops and grows in complexity, we find that many traits that may have been selected for evolutionary advantage no longer help us in the current iteration of our existence. Through civilization, medicine, agriculture, and all of our other wonderful human inventions, we have managed to minimize, if not completely eliminate the effects of natural selection on our species. The result is that we are no longer subject to evolutionary pressures as our great great great… ancestors were. As such, the responsibility for our evolution falls upon us.

Social anxiety might have played an important role for our ancestors somewhere along our evolutionary path, but it can often hinder us nowadays where active social behavior is encouraged and rewarded.

As previously mentioned, some* people object to these types of drugs (or similar drugs/procedures), that alter the human body or mind from its “natural” state. Of course, as previously discussed, there isn’t any real distinction between “natural” and “artificial” substances. However, even if we did draw a distinction between the “natural” state of the human body and other artificially imposed states, we have no reason to conclude that our natural state is any better than one we can impose upon ourselves. In fact, using “artificial” drugs and therapies, we are often able to relieve pain, raise the quality of or extend the duration of life, allow people to function better, and make people happier.

And the truth is we do have the ability to allow people to live better lives; and if we can accomplish this by overriding our “natural” state with drugs, then I’m all for it. In conclusion, yay science!

*Opposition to these types of drugs is usually limited in scope, but it does exist.