Forgetfulness? Forget It
If you can’t remember for sure, but it seems like your memory is failing, there’s good news on the medical research front these days. News services report some companies -- their names slip the mind right now -- are researching memory-enhancing pills. Not those dubious herbs from late-night TV. But little meds you swallow, causing lazy or overtired brain cells to perk up and remember stuff better than folks associate with your advancing age -- the best kind of age to have.
Imagine your ability to learn Italian for the Tuscany trip. The enhanced memory power at SATs after taking pills the previous week. The names of everyone you met at the convention. What to do with toilet seats. To recall grandchildren’s precise ages, even your anniversary. Or why you wanted children who became teens.
Of course, the same chemicals could conceivably cause middle-aged users to become 14 inches tall, to memorize C-SPAN transcripts and whistle Wagner unpredictably. And with the new drug, they’d remember every single second. That’s the point of tests on human volunteers to begin this summer. Or was it next year?
Anyway, some marketing genius has dubbed the potential pills “Mind Viagra.” That’ll line up the customers, at least the men.
Tim Tully, a genetics professor at New York’s Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, has already tested the memory drug -- HT-0712 -- on fruit flies and mice. Exactly what memories fruit flies have, and humans want mice to develop, is unclear. Will it help the insects avoid encounters with quick-tongued frogs? And teach mice that the funny-tasting gray pellets in boxes under sinks are not all that good for rodents? And, by the way, how big are these fruit flies if they’re taking pills?
This kind of study suggests Mind Viagra research for other skills. Maybe develop one for youth soccer players (who now all run around like unorganized water bugs), causing them after a single practice to play like Real Madrid. The Clippers organization could supply Skill Viagra to teach players where the basketball should fall. Constituents could mail pills to Sacramento politicians to remind them who they’re working for (hint: not the lunchtime lobbyists).
The memory pills, if patients remember to take them, could help candidates recall what they promised four years ago and that it directly contradicts today’s speech. There could be a Violin Viagra, enabling tone-deaf klutzes to become virtuosos -- and to remember what virtuoso means. A pill to remember all the passwords and PINs necessary for modern life.
The downsides, besides becoming a whistling midget, are obvious. A memory jogger would erase the credibility of every family’s favorite excuse: “I forgot.” You’d remember all life’s bad stuff too. Vividly recall each childhood slight as wet cement holds paw prints, and make those juvenile culprits pay, no matter how they hide. The antidote for that would be stopping the Mind Viagra and letting nature take its course. Which, if memory serves, is what we have now.