Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and the Ethical Issue on Tampering with Memory Formation

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an occupational hazard for police officers, firefighters, soldiers, butchers, rescue workers, and so on. Consider train crews. According to Edward Dubroski (2000), international president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive

Engineers and Trainmen (BLET), a train strikes a motor vehicle every 2 hours. No doubt such an event gets seared into the crew's memory, with the help of an epinephrine rush. BLET's Timothy L. Smith (2007) testified to the U.S. House of Representatives:

You cannot imagine the terror a train's crew experience when their train comes roaring around a curve at full speed and a truck, car, or pedestrian is just ahead. You can't blow the whistle long enough or loud enough, and your heart creeps up further in your throat with each passing yard as your closing distance races to zero. The emotional toll that is exacted on our members who are unable to stop these incidents-is often life-altering. (pp. 6-7)

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Why should these workers suffer such agonizing memories, which may result from another person's carelessness? If it were possible, would it be more humane to give the sufferers drugs that could erase or lessen the emotional memories of these events?

Is tampering with memory formation ethical? Like many medications, treatments for PTSD could also be used for other purposes. Such drugs could be used to prepare soldiers to kill (or kill again), to blunt the memory of one's own shameful or embarrassing acts, to dull the pain of the loss of a loved one, or to allow criminals to numb their consciences. Who should determine which uses are appropriate and which are not?

Humans are social animals with intricate societal structures honed by evolution. Many of those societal structures are based on reciprocity and on detecting people who cheat. Although it may benefit an individual to have a blunted memory of a traumatic assault, will society survive if individuals no longer have the moral outrage to pursue their perpetrators, thus undermining detection of people who cheat? Victims of the Holocaust have suffered greatly from traumatic memories but also have contributed greatly to society by increasing our vigilance against regimes like the Nazis' Third Reich.

Would memory alteration put truth (remembering events as they really happened) in opposition to compassion or well-being? Our senses of ourselves, of who we are, come from the amalgamation of memories that we each possess. Would we be better or worse off if we could cherry-pick those memories? And finally, do we really understand memory well enough to start tinkering with it? And the emotional toll that is exacted on our members who are unable to stop these incidents. And  train comes roaring around a curve at full speed and a truck.

References

1. Dubroski, E. (2000, April 19). Letter to the federal railroad administration from the
2. Brotherhood of locomotive engineers [Electronic version]. Message archived retrieved from
3. http://www.bleteam.org/naslbc/Reg_Leg_Issues/Homs/BLET_comments_04-19-2000.pdf.
4. Smith, T. L. (2007, August 9). Testimony at U.S. House of Representatives hearing on
5. federal, state, and local roles in rail safety [Electronic version]. Retrieved from the
6. Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen at
7. http://www.bletdc.org/legislation/testimony/Smith%2020070809.pdf.

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