Modafinil is a little-known drug that staves off sleep without the side effects of amphetamines; it may join Prozac and Viagra in the lineup of pharmacological adjustments to the modern life. As The Washington Post explains in an article that reads like an extract from Jonathan Franzen’s “The Corrections,” Modafinil may help the Pentagon create a “metabolically dominant soldier.” It may, for that matter, create a metabolically dominant office worker, a metabolically dominant defense secretary or–and wouldn’t this be sweet–a metabolically dominant magazine writer. More from the Post:
Originally aimed at narcoleptics, who fall asleep frequently and uncontrollably, modafinil works without the jitter, buzz, euphoria, crash, addictive characteristics or potential for paranoid delusion of stimulants like amphetamines or cocaine or even caffeine, researchers say. As with an increasing number of the so-called superhuman, posthuman or trans-human drugs or genetic manipulations rapidly entering our lives, modafinil thus calls into question some fundamental underpinnings of hundreds of thousands of years of thought regarding what are normal human capabilities.
The implications for Washington are profound.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is searching for ways to create the “metabolically dominant soldier.” Among the projects it is pursuing is the creation of a warrior who can fight 24 hours a day, seven days straight. “Eliminating the need for sleep while maintaining the high level of both cognitive and physical performance of the individual will create a fundamental change in war-fighting,” says the Defense Sciences Office on its Web site. As usual, DARPA did not comment directly for this report.
