dr. hurlbut, is going on here? she's getting a drug for something that's not a disease. is this treatment? what is it? how should we think about this? well, actually as this has been proceeding, i've been thinking what if maria had said, "my tenth grader at albert einstein high school has serious issues with his homework and needs to be able to stay up longer." would the same rationale hold here? and i think we'd all have a little pause on that. i think we have to be very careful not to convert all of life's challenges or circumstances into medical problems. there are obviously certain circumstances we use compounds that alter our behavior, such as caffeine. last night, the person sitting next to me got a little enhanced on their red wine. but-- and we wouldn't say that was a medical treatment, exactly. the thing is you have to realize is that biology is a very complex balance. and the physicians in this room will know very well that there's no such thing as a drug that does one thing. look at the list of adverse reactions on any pharmaceutical that gets prescribed for y

dr. hurlbut, is there no emotional-memory suffering that you wouldn't treat with a drug like this? i think psychiatrists treat emotional suffering with drugs. but first of all, even if something is defined as a disease, we try not to treat it with anything that invades the system if we can help it. what about the soldier case? soldier coming back from iraq who wants to forget the memory of all that killing i did for my country. i think there's a more positive way to deal with that. i've seen people with post-traumatic stress syndrome. it's a very disabling condition, and i think you try to get the person back to functioning. i see psychiatric medicines as sort of like the analogy of a cast around a broken leg. you try and get the personality back so it can heal itself. but i don't like the idea of manipulation of self. and by the way, i don't agree with art caplan's analogy that the eyeglasses that judge scalia wears is somehow the same as a drug that goes to the very core of the person. i think there's a big difference in that. that's a tool. thank you, 'cause i really need these.