The Manchurian Candidate

January 15th, 2013

How far would you go to cure your addiction? Would you sell all of your earthly possessions? Would you devote the rest of your life to charitable pursuits? Or would you prefer to have a hole drilled into your skull in order to allow a long electrode deep into your brain where an electrical current is blasted, killing the part of your brain that is tied to addiction?

Thanks to a select group of doctors in China, you can do all three.

The Chinese Ministry of Health banned the aforementioned procedure in 2004 after it was decided that the long-term safety of such a practice could not be evaluated. However, a small number of doctors were allowed to continue using the technique under the pretense of research and have performed this high tech lobotomy some 1000 times since. These doctors have recently released the findings of their controversial study and, surprise surprise, the results aren’t very promising.

The surgery did show some marginal signs of helping curb addiction relapse with 47% of patients remaining addiction free compared to the normal rate of 30-40% of people who used conventional treatment. However, up to 60% of patients showed some kind of negative side effects including memory deficits and loss of motivation. More than half of the patients also exhibited a change in personality, which observers referred to as “mildness oriented”.

The problem with this procedure is in its design more than its execution. The surgery targets the pleasure and reward centers of the brain, which unfortunately are also the parts of the brain that allow us to become addicted to things. In destroying this part of the brain, there is a chance of eliminating addictive behavior as well as pleasure-seeking behavior simultaneously. The part of the brain that makes cotton candy taste good gets zapped along with the part of the brain that makes addicts do wild and crazy things in pursuit of their next high. This part of the brain allows us to make choices. It allows us to display our humanity, and inhumanity, by acting against and in accordance with our more primal desires. What is accomplished by destroying our vices along with our virtues?