The Trust Drug

Trust issues? Have no fear. Now there's a drug just for you! From BBC: Trust drug may cure social phobia:

A nasal spray which increases our trust for strangers is showing promise as a treatment for social phobia, say scientists from Zurich University.

They found that people who inhaled the "love hormone" oxytocin continued to trust strangers with their money - even after they were betrayed.

Previous studies have shown that participants in "trust games" took greater risks with their money after inhaling the hormone via a nasal spray.

In this latest experiment, published in the journal Neuron, the researchers asked volunteer subjects to take part in a similar trust game.

They were asked to contribute money to a human trustee, with the understanding that the trustee would invest the money and decide whether to return the profits or betray the subjects trust by keeping the profit.

The subjects also received doses of oxytocin or a placebo via a nasal spray.

After investing, the participants were given feedback on the trustees. When their trust was abused, the placebo group became less willing to invest. But the players who had been given oxytocin continued to trust their money with a broker.

"We can see that oxytocin has a very powerful effect," said Dr Baumgartner.

"The subjects who received oxytocin demonstrated no change in their trust behaviour, even though they were informed that their trust was not honoured in roughly 50% of cases."

The doctors report the results of the tests as 'promising'. Really? Promising? Am I the only one that's worried that people are creating a drug that will make conning and being conned much easier? How is it that governments are letting them experiment with a drug that makes people trust strangers? They've obviously never read a Malaysian newspaper, with scam SMSes, unsuspecting drug mules, girls being raped by acquaintances, etc. Of course, it should be a controlled substance, and like all other controlled substances, will quickly form its own black market. Jesus.