An interesting article this morning. Turns out that a widely used blood pressure medication has the unintended side affect of muting racist thoughts. From yahoo news:
“Implicit racial bias can occur even in people with a sincere belief in equality,” said Sylvia Terbeck, lead author of the study, which was published in the journal Psychopharmacology. “Given the key role that such implicit attitudes appear to play in discrimination against other ethnic groups, and the widespread use of Propranolol for medical purposes, our findings are also of considerable ethical interest.”
So what does this mean? Well it definitely adds some fodder to the nature versus nurture racial debate. Capillary defects in the brain? Can’t wait to see what kind of neurological and sociological studies this spawns. Given the Supreme Court’s take that if you don’t talk about racism, it doesn’t exist, I would love for this to develop further into an argument than can be used against the colorblind individualism model.
