Scientists Produce Fearless Mice 499
Dotnaught writes "According to New Scientist, a Rutgers University geneticist has found that turning off a specific gene for the protein stathmin makes mice fearless. The story speculates that this research might improve treatment for phobias. It does not mention obvious military applications for the discovery. As noted in this Naval Officer's guide for managing fatigue, the use of amphetamines to stay alert, followed by sedatives to sleep, has a long tradition. Genetic treatments may offer an alternative to pharmaceuticals."
Good old PCP (Score:5, Insightful)
The non-military uses for such a treatment are pretty far-reaching. Would it be able to cure people that suffer anxiety attacks? Could children with night terrors be cured?
If the rats don't feel fear, do they also lose understanding of danger? That would be a pretty bad mutation.
Re:Good old PCP (Score:5, Insightful)
My first thought also. There are some situations where fear is an entirely appropriate response - lose it, and unwarranted risks may start to become a problem.
Military applications make me shiver... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems alright, I quit military service a long time ago...
Regards
Stirz
Re:Good old PCP (Score:1, Insightful)
Perhaps. For many people with anxiety attacks, they can be overcome by practicing whatever gives them the most panics. over and over, until it becomes re-learned that it's really a safe behaviour. If a treatment like this could be enabled temporarily, it might help.
Then again if there's no fear, there may also be no concept of 'safe' either, so when the treatment is eased off everything may fall back to how it was beforehand.
Much testing to be done.
i question the ethics of this (Score:1, Insightful)
Are these mice really fearless... (Score:5, Insightful)
...or just plain stupid?
Re:Military applications make me shiver... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's all you needed to say. There isn't two hands. Governments should butt the hell out and mind their own business.
Isn't fear important? (Score:1, Insightful)
Imagine hordes of these running fearless into machinegun fire... Very effective, I presume....
Fear often prevents us from doing really stupid things. So far this worked good along evolution...
Re:Military applications make me shiver... (Score:5, Insightful)
The only logic here is 'do what we say and don't question anything.'
Re:Good old PCP (Score:3, Insightful)
Um, source?
From my experience, PCP would be a terrible thing to give soldiers. You'd end up with a Jacob's Ladder scenario where they become afraid of - and attack - friends and enemies at random.
since when does being alert = fearless? (Score:5, Insightful)
fear is a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Military applications make me shiver... (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you mean, "even the Nazis"? A totalitarian government, emphasizing the military and denial of the individual, would be almost expected to do this. What is more scary, is that democracies, which we expect to respect and defend the rights of the individual, even to the point of restricting what the police and military can do, are chemically altering the bodies and minds of their soldiers.
Re:fear is a good thing (Score:2, Insightful)
If the fearless-gene was beneficial for the mice (Score:2, Insightful)
In a world of cats, fear is the superior evolutionary trait.
No, fearless mice get eaten. (Score:3, Insightful)
Fearless doesn't mean insane (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Military applications ? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is a bit of oversimplification. Soldiers can be motivated by things other than fear: the sense of friendship, pride, the feeling of responsibility and (misguided or not) patriotism. History is full with exapmles of people knowingly and willingly sacrificing their life for good of others, ranging from Spartans to Soviet atheists (neither of those could even hope for a decent afterlife: the void of Hades ain't much better than simple non-existance). I believe that in Iraq fights of today you could find such instances at both sides involved, too.
That said, your general argument remains valid. Humans for high command are mostly numbers, and are operated from statistical point of view. They would hate to rely solely for underlings' loyalty.
Re:fear is a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Fear is merely a mental shortcut. Instead of rationally arguing that doing something will lead to an unadvantageous situation, our brains merely automatically develop fears of the situation and we avoid it quasi-instinctually.
That said, if you were to completely remove fear without changing anything else, I do not doubt that shit would happen. Human beings are nowhere near as smart as they could be, and are probably not capable of thinking things out clearly enough. As it stands, we probably need mental crutches like fear until we are able to augment our intelligence.
But still, we should not imply that fear and desire are the only things capable of driving people. Fear is distinct from pain, desire is distinct from happiness.
Re:Military applications ? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think we overlook how much fun it is to kill. It does satisfy a deep urging we have as animals. It's why people hunt, It's why children enjoy ripping legs off of grasshoppers, I knew a guy who used to buy mice and hit them with a golf club. There is a tremendous fun element in killing.
Re:Military applications ? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is so incorrect as to lead me to guess that the original poster either has not served in the armed services or had a bad experience while doing so. In a successful military, soldiers serve because they believe, not because they are forced to. This is exactly why, even in this era of recruiting problems, the US military still strongly prefers to avoid the draft. It is choice, not fear, that makes fighters effective.
The appropriate techical term is "berserker" (Score:3, Insightful)
I doubt it (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not so sure (Score:3, Insightful)
Fear would seem to be a good candidate for a neurobiologically switchable emotion, but even fear is more complex than it seems at first glance.
I saw a photo in some book I read on the psychology of emotions that showed a truck tipping over. The truck was loaded with maybe thirty soccer fans returning from a game, and all that rowdy weight caused the thing to overbalance. The photo was taken just as the truck was approaching 45 degrees, and the people on the top were leaping to safety. What was interesting about the photo was the peoples' faces. The people leaping to safety had no look of fear or emotion at all -- just intense concentration. The driver, however is obviously terrified.
The point is that there is arousal in response to danger, and there is fear. Arousal in the presence of danger is not fear: fear is specifically an emotional reaction to helplessness in the presence of danger. It's evolution's way of say, "If you're going to do nothing about this situation, then you'd better do it really, really unobtrusively."
There is already a method for controlling and eliminating fear in a soldier. It's called "training". You ingrain the right response in a danger situation into him so he can act automatically. He may be afraid before hand and traumatized afterward, but you want him aroused and as close to fearless as possible at the moment of truth.
Because of the imprecision of language, I suspect a pill that turns off "fear" would actually make a soldier's training less effective. The physiological and emotional response to danger which is not fear, or at least not exactly fear, curiously doesn't have a distinct name. Clearly this unnamed state is a kind of emotional state -- one in which reactions are automatic and information is extensively filtered down to that which is paradigmatically most useful for survival. Perhaps "fear" is a reasonable umbrella term for all kinds of arousal reactions to danger, but we have to distinguish between being "frightened" or "scared" on one hand and being "terrified" or "petrified".
But whatever the word is, I expect the condition of reacting to danger is on the whole more beneficial to the warrior than it is detrimental to a warrior. And, as you say, if the soldier does not react in an emotional way to danger, then the way he does react is probably unpredictable. An ideal pill from a military standpoint would narrowly block the "petrification" reflex, without altering any of the other subjective aspects of fear.
Re:Military applications make me shiver... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If the fearless-gene was beneficial for the mic (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:My Vision of the Future (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good old PCP (Score:3, Insightful)
And/or a much smaller society, as you say ;)
The other thing that occurs to me is that I think that for many (if not most) people there are certain situations where fear of the consequences is one of the main things that keeps them (us) from behaving badly. Take away that fear, and pretty much the only thing that's left is the relatively straightforward and cold calculus of "can I get away with this?" And unfortunately, there already doesn't seem to be a shortage of people who think that yes, they are clever or careful enough to get away with some bad act - absent fear, they'd have one less restraint on their behavior.
Re:Maybe, maybe not, but nothing in it for the Arm (Score:3, Insightful)
Start a eugenics war? Control them with drugs?