Its dangerous trend if happening in the world. If the era of doping may be looming in academia, it is a matter of serious debate about policy and ethics echoes a new kind of international controversy to introduce doping test in academia.

This is not acceptable. The main purpose of medication is to heal the sick, not to make healthy people into super humans. But what I think is doping test can't solve the problem but it would divide intellectuals in two groups.

The era of competitiveness forces parents to take some extra care of their children to make them successful. And if you could improve your child's academic performance with using pills, this is not a hypothetical question anymore. Every parents naturally want their children to excel. Taking natural desire is now old phenomenon and asking doctors to prescribe drugs like Ritalin and Adderall to make the kids and youths super intellectual. The rising trend of 'academic doping' needs doping test now.

Academia doping?? Then how would we define success and achievement? How can we expect something form our children? Is it justified to put kids on powerful stimulants or medication just to secure their grades and scores in exams? What kind of teaching is this what we are giving to our children?

World is developing and medical science has invented pills for every problem for us. Pills is everything and we can get everything in Pills. If you got an infection, there is an antibiotic pill. If you can't sleep, here is a sedative. You are not able to breathe, you can take an antihistamine. If you can't cope, take a psychotropic pill. Viagra makes you sexually fit? Steroid can help athletes. Memory enhance will help you to remember which pill you can for which problem. now, the last but not the least, if you want your children to get good scores in exams, Ritalin and Adderall will help them. Is this called development?

Pills to enhance academic performance to 'help' the children to gain academic or athletic perfection they desire and expect is unwise extremes. We all should condemn such practices.

The problem is not that some pill-eager parents are just seeking to level the playing field for their children but they are trying to make their children super humans.

Can pill motivate children to perform better? This medication doesn’t effect motivation. Without motivation, no medication can help a child to always get good scores in exams. And doping test would further reduce the motivation level too.

Parents, who cares their children, should prepare a list of concerns and they should talk to the child about what they feel. Friendly talking is the best way to encourage them. Parents should find the problem their kids are facing and motivate them to overcome the problem with their own. Such process would make them mentally strong. Medication is short-term solution.

Pills to change or enhance performance do not change negative behaviors or feelings. When the effect of medication goes down, the negative behaviors or feelings returns. The situation becomes dangerous when the child feels the same what he was feeling before medication.

Just like any performance enhancing drugs in sports (of course chess is a sport too that requires brain power), drugs should be banned in academia as well. People may argue that taking drugs increases imagination, creativity etc. Kekule dreamed of a snake eating its own tail while he fell asleep thinking what could be the atomic structure of benzene. Thus, his subconscious mind told him that the structure would be hexagonal rings. Was he on drugs? Almost certainly not.

Those who use drugs LSD to increase creativity are actually delusional people who are doing more harm than good to themselves and others by advocating its use just as sportsmen risk long term health hazard using steroids.

scientific knowledge of the world comes through the academia. if drugs are aiding the cause why stop it. human beings are always in the pursuit of knowledge. we could well be cavemen or even lesser beings happy with living naturally.

Does coffee stimulate the body and works wonders for the brain early in the morning? Caffeine is a narcotic too just like opium or cannabis is. So coffee is also a performance enhancing drug. Since it is a soft narcotic no one talks about it. If any drug enhances performances of scientists and researchers why ban it? After all scientists are not sportsmen providing entertainment to millions of people and fair play is expected.

The best solution would be to spare the children by giving them pills to concentrate for longer periods of time on their studies. But we must leave it up to the adults to decide what they should or should not do.

Adults can take their own decisions. But minors should be strictly discouraged.

i dont belive that drugs help minds. they destroy it completely... then ppl get addicted and become mental patients...... we must ban drugs from everywhere like sports schools unis.

To dope or not to dope must be an adult decision. Would you ban a top scientist with years of knowledge through research if he is caught in a dope test. This will do more harm to mankind than good. This is preposterous.

No academic can work with a sane mind if he is on recreational drugs like cocaine or speed. Drugs that helps the working of the mind do not fall under this category. Besides, highly intellectual people like scientists and artists do not go around openly promoting such drugs. If they do, they do it discreetly.

drugs or any other special chemical concoctions to enhance performance whether of the mind or body must be discouraged at all costs. we don't want sports persons to take anabolic steroids and in the same time we don't want a nobel laureate to be a drug dependent scientist.

Drugs will rot the mind if anything else. It is a well known fact that the drugs that keeps you awake or helps you concentrate are not for minors and they are not sold over the counter. Unless you have a physician's prescription for a remedy of a physical problem, you are not supposed to get it.

That brings to the point whether the access of such drugs is legal or illegal. Dope tests at all levels must be encouraged because this will help weed out illegal and underground trade of these so called brain pills.

Eating healthy, exercising regularly and maintaining a healthy lifestyle is the key for success in academia and not some quick fix solution like popping a pill.

I agree with Jackie that pills cannot motivate anyone to perform. However, the motivation to achieve higher goals and glory is too much to try out anything and everything that might help.

This is a trend that must be stopped now. Else, there would be a time when not having resources for the pill would be like not having resources to pursue an academic career.

To those on the right:

I am sure some of you have kids. Would you allow your kids to take pills to enhance their academic performance than leave it up to them to fare to the best of their abilities naturally? I would never ever imagine putting my kids through such a hazardous course.

NEVER EVER.

if doping helps in gaining knowledge then it must be encouraged. If the top brains are ruining themselves by doping as some suggested here then we must take it as their sacrifice today for our better future.

Anti-dope lobby should keep off the academia. They are a good for nothing bunch of idiots.

Dopers are cheats. Is there any doubt? As cheating is not allowed in exams, this must be disallowed too. Hence, there should be doping tests. I would always support such an initiative where even academics are not spared.

It is impossible to dope test millions of students appearing for exams etc. Do you have any idea how many students appear in exams in India, China, Thailand etc? The figure is mind boggling. Such a process would mean wastage of public money that can be better utilized elsewhere.

Tell me what do you do when you are physically weak? Take a few vitamin supplements. Similarly if a child is mentally weak why stop him from taking pills that might improve his intelligence? I don't find any logic behind this.

Whatever the pros and cons of doping, the very notion of encouraging drugs is flawed to the core. There cannot be a healthy society where doping is encouraged or ignored as something as common as smoking.

We don't need to create geniuses in every child. Geniuses had been there before and will be there in the future as we have them today. Isaac Newtons of the middle ages didn't need them, so why do we need them today or for that matter in the future?

These are just placebos and nothing more. There is no such drug that can increase the intelligence in a human being.

It must be allowed in higher levels of academia and discouraged in the lower levels such as high school levels. It can be allowed in the Masters and PhD levels to boost research capabilities in scientists.

If such wonder drugs are available then they must be treated as something good for mankind like aspirin. What is the fuss all about then? Can you disallow a scientist to puff his cigar to relax and rejuvenate his stressed mind?

When the answer is an obvious 'no' why to stop a medical/pharmaceutical advancement from reaching out to the masses. If there are side effects then the drugs must be withdrawn from the market altogether.

it would be interesting to know if the fda has given clearance to such drugs for sale. if they have, then i have no probs using them.

Brain-enhancing drugs will not make the people superhumans. Just like any skill, true intelligence comes from the one who uses these drugs properly.

These drugs are acceptable if FDA approves them. Otherwise, they should be banned.

The US Navy has used LSD to assist engineers in complex visualisation tasks. Military applications not perhaps being the best indicators of something’s worth but it is still interesting that in a country where the psychoactive is criminalised that the DoD finds a use for it. Also - amphetamines have their own military application. Perhaps if someone could sneak some Ecstasy into the military stockpile and we may just have soldiers hugging each other instead of killing. ;)

Is being normal and performing within one’s limit and capability so abnormal nowadays? The ever rising trend of acquiring unnatural prowess through pills or super drugs is looming so large as to devour the natural stamina and intellect. I seriously assert that the above mentioned drugs should be discarded and doping tests should be conducted more frequently so that we may remain human. After all, each one of us is provided with some peculiarity by the almighty and we should not contaminate ourselves.