Erasing the Pain of the Past
March 20, 2007 — "I’d take it in a second," said Sgt.
Michael Walcott, an Iraq War veteran, referring to an experimental drug with the
potential to target and erase traumatic memories.
Walcott, who served in a Balad-based transportation unit that regularly took
mortar fire, now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. Since returning to
the United States two years ago, he has been on antidepressants and in group
therapy as he tries to put his life back together and heal from the
psychological scars of war. "There are moments," he said, "when you just want be
alone and don’t want to deal with everyone telling you that you’ve changed."
There are many others like Walcott. The Army estimates that one in eight
soldiers returning home from Iraq suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Symptoms of the disorder, once known as shell shock, include flashbacks,
nightmares, feelings of detachment, irritability, trouble concentrating and
sleeplessness.
Much about why painful memories come back to haunt soldiers and those who
live through other traumatic experiences remains unknown. Scientists say that is
because little is known about how the brain stores and recalls memories.
But in their early efforts to understand the way in which short-term memories
become long-term memories, researchers have discovered that certain drugs can
interrupt that process. Those same drugs, they believe, can also be applied not
just in the immediate aftermath of a traumatic event — like a mortar attack,
rape or car accident — but years later, when an individual is still haunted by
memories of event.
The hope is that a post-traumatic stress disorder patient can work with a
psychiatrist and focus a traumatic event, take one of these drugs and then
slowly forget that event. With that hope, however, comes a series of ethical
concerns. What makes up our personalities — the essence of who we are as
individuals — if not the collected memories of our experiences?
"This is all very preliminary," said Dr. Roger Pitman, a Harvard Medical
School psychiatrist. "We’re just getting started. There is some promising
preliminary data but no conclusions."
Much of the research Pitman is currently conducting on human subjects at
Massachusetts General Hospital focuses on altering memories in the immediate
aftermath of a specific type of trauma —
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