Columns:: Worth repeating

since 12/15/98

Columns::October 14, 2002

Worth repeating

At this year’s William A. Owens Lecture, Alan Leshner, executive director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, discussed the role of the behavioral sciences in the broader scientific enterprise, using as an example the study of drug addiction. Some excerpts:
“Behavioral science has made phenomenal contributions. However, there are some big questions that remain. I argue that we have actually tackled only the easy stuff. The really hard stuff is yet to come. Let me give you some examples. My favorite is vulnerability. We know that there are individual differences in people’s vulnerability to become addicted once they’ve used drugs. Some people use a drug three or four times and they’re doomed; other people can occasionally use drugs for a very long time and not become addicted. So we say that there are great differences in vulnerability.
“But what does it mean? Vulnerability to what? To starting to use drugs? To liking drug use? To continuing? To becoming addicted? Is it specific to a particular drug? We basically know very little about this, although recently, by the way, we have been learning a bit about the mechanisms underlying why some people like some drugs more than other people. There’s tremendous variation, for example, in whether people like marijuana--33 percent of the variability among people, in whether they like it or not, is genetic. Methamphetamine: people react to it either very positively or they dislike it. And a study was just done recently that shows that baseline levels of dopamine receptors predict whether or not people will like or not like stimulant drugs. It’s interesting; we’re getting there. But I would argue that there are a whole array of behavioral science questions that we haven’t even touched here.”

--Beth Roberts

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