Scientific ethics and addiction

I will post two posts today, as the first post is a bit heavy and dark, I post something lighter afterwards. An article appeared this week on my facebook feed that moved me, and made me think deeply in a more profound way than I can remember anything that has appeared there before: http://theweek.com/articles/541564/how-american-opiate-epidemic-started-by-pharmaceutical-company

Read this article, to the end. Let is sink in...

The sudden and devastating opiate addiction epidemic in the rural USA that has directly led to the deaths of thousands, destroyed the lives of an order of magnitude more and laid waste to countless rural communities has a single source: the aggressive marketing of the legal medication OxyContin by Purdue Pharma. OxyContin is an opiate, the family of drugs of based on a similar molecular shape that all target the same mechanism; they only differ in strength of effect and time of onset. addiction to one is addiction to another, as addiction sets in the natural tendency is towards the faster acting forms ultimately leading to firect injection of heroin. 

For me two issues emerge here: 1) What scientific ethics should really be about and 2) Addiction as a phenomenon beyond physical drug molecules and how our economic system provides the highest incentive for triggering it through one means or another. Discussions around "scientific ethics" are usually focussed elsewhere, sometimes around legitimate issues of animal suffering, but often around frustratingly meaningless metaphysical issues that only make sense to someone with no understanding of the science whatsoever: embryonic stem cells, genetic modification, chimera species etc... Here is the real issue staring us in the face of science being used for evil that safeguards have failed to stop. This can not be passed off as a purely business decision, OxyContin was developed and tested as a new opiate drug molecule, and its addictive potential downplayed before being passed on the the salesmen who marketed it aggressively to doctors who were sought out based on their tendency to overprescribe medication, to the doctors who accepted kickbacks for making the prescriptions. The scientists who developed the molecule are no more or less cogs in the wheel of this catastrophe than any of the other actors involved, all just individuals trying to get their financial bonuses. 

But, sadly, is this not just a microcosm of what is a central part of the engine of our economic system? Addiction is not just about physical molecules that trigger a need for the reward provided by consumption of more of the same, while tolerance reduces the effect of a specific dose; the non-physical can trigger the same. Gambling is known to trigger a very similar set of reward centers to cocaine. In an experiment rats were given one of two types of food dispensers one dispensing a food pellet with every third push from the rats nose, and the other having a one in three chance of dispensing a pellet with each push. In the first case the rat learned that three pushes means food and it went about its life normally otherwise. In the latter case the rat fell into a pathological behaviour of compulsively continually pushing the dispenser: the uncertainty created a reward trigger led to addiction; the essence of gambling addiction had been isolated. Video games are designed specifically to pace the frequency and level of psychological rewards to maximize addiction. If one looks even more broadly the clearest route to wealth is the creation of a "need" in a large group of consumers that was not there before, is not success in our current economic system based on, in some way or another, the creation of an addiction reaction in others?