Posted Mar 8, 2012, 10:38 am
A common heart disease drug may also alter subconscious racial attitudes, a new study has found, leading scientists to suggest that racism is based on fear.
Tests on volunteers who took the beta-blocker propranolol showed they were less racially biased than those who took a placebo, the Independent reported.
Propranolol acts on nerve circuits that govern automatic functions such as heart rate, as well as those that govern the part of the brain involved in fear and emotional responses. For that reason, it is also used to treat anxiety and panic.
According to the Australian Associated Press, the scientists conducting the study believed the discovery could be explained by the fact that racism was fundamentally founded on fear.
AAP cited experimental psychologist Dr. Sylvia Terbeck, from Oxford University, who led the study published in the journal Psychopharmacology, as saying:
"Our results offer new evidence about the processes in the brain that shape implicit racial bias. Implicit racial bias can occur even in people with a sincere belief in equality."
According to the Associated Press, two groups of 18 volunteers were involved in the study, with each being asked to undertake a "racial Implicit Association Test" (IAT) one to two hours after taking propranolol or the placebo.
Asked to categorize positive and negative words when shown pictures of black and white people on a computer screen, more than a third of the volunteers taking propranolol had a "negative" IAT score — effectively, they were biased towards being non-racist at a subconscious level.
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The same result was not seen in any member of the placebo group.
Co-author Professor Julian Savulescu, from Oxford University's Faculty of Philosophy, reportedly said: "Such research raises the tantalizing possibility that our unconscious racial attitudes could be modulated using drugs, a possibility that requires careful ethical analysis.
"Biological research aiming to make people morally better has a dark history. And propranolol is not a pill to cure racism. But given that many people are already using drugs like propranolol which have 'moral' side effects, we at least need to better understand what these effects are."
1 comment on this story
Africa for the Africans,Asia for the Asians,white countries for EVERYBODY!
Everybody says there is this RACE problem. Everybody says this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY white country and ONLY into white countries.
The Netherlands and Belgium are just as crowded as Japan or Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing in millions of third worlders and quote assimilating unquote with them.
Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries to “assimilate,” i.e., intermarry, with all those non-whites.
What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries?
How long would it take anyone to realize I’m not talking about a RACE problem. I am talking about the final solution to the BLACK problem?
And how long would it take any sane black man to notice this and what kind of psycho black man wouldn’t object to this?
But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the white race, Liberals and respectable conservatives agree I am a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.
They say they are anti-racist.What they are is anti-white.
Anti-racist is a codeword for anti-white.