Editing Memory

The New York Times reports today that scientists have made a breakthrough in editing memory, helping people to forget traumatic incidents, bad habits and more.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/health/research/06brain.html?_r=1&em

Release a drug to block several molecules, wipe out an engram.

I'm sure there will be a number of posts by people concerned about use of any such drug. And ethics will be a big concern, because my first thought about this is that really, there isn't anything I think I need to forget. But I have a laundry-list of things I'd like everyone else to forget.

That day in seventh grade, when I abruptly got my first period, while wearing white pants. That can go. I have a list of about forty-three people we (my flying monkey squad and I) need to visit to wipe that one out.

The entire two-day relationship with that guy who insisted we were "soul-mates" once the person I thought was a friend dumped him on me - literally. If we wipe that one out of the minds of the not-friend (different from an um-friend), all spectators, and the gentleman in question, he will be free to find his real soul-mate, in Australia, Tibet or Zimbabwe, having completely forgotten that abruptly forged supposed link and with no hypocrisy whatsoever in his new starry-eyed glomping.

The time the guy left me at a party and I coped by getting drunk, then climbing into the closet so no one would know I was drunk. I still don't know how they thought to look in the closet when they noticed I was gone, but really, the whole thing could go. Twenty people on the brain drug hit list and whammo, my universal lifetime reputation vastly improved.

The time the guy made fondue for our romantic date and it made me really sick and he left me to be cared for by my friend his roommate.  The roommate gets a pass for being a true friend.

Now, a lot of these things were twenty years ago now, and the vast majority of the witnesses have already forgotten me entirely, wouldn't recognize me now at all, or have moved into a witness protection program and are living in Antarctica dressed as penguins. But any time I think of running for political office, publishing anything with my real name, or being otherwise visible on the collective social radar, I think back and wonder how many people remember far too much about the person I once was to see clearly the person I now am. And somehow, someone showing up with a laundry list of pernicious details and dumb moves while dressed as a penguin seems more likely to damage my current reputation than even a more sensibly dressed witness might do.

I picture being on "This is Your Life" with a conga line of failed romantic endeavors and every one with its own series of embarrassments. Now, there is always a chance that people simply won't care. It's not as if I've ever hired a nanny under the table or accidentally listed $45,000 in charitable deductions on my tax returns. And, in fact, the majority of my friends who are about a decade younger than I visibly flinch at the very possibility of any personal revelation from younger and more foolish days, as if their own mother were about to tell them about some drunken hippie escapade. With tongue.  So I do have a cadre of protectors who would willingly picket the "This is Your Life" set with large sheets to ensure no one saw anything, largely to save their own senses of shock, horror and dismay at old people being juvenile delinquents. But so far, no sheet to drape over the lingering mental images of other old people who were young when I was young and whether more or less foolish than I, at least more sensible about giving out public ammunition.

So the flying monkeys and I are waiting until this thing is widely available, and will be wiping out selective references to "vomit," "soul mates" and "seventh grade." We think this will really be a general public service with widespread benefits, although we have a personal interest in the matter.