Military Review English Edition January-February 2015 | Page 96

United States Army. The U.S. Army also became
interested in amphetamines and caffeine for soldier
enhancement. Some of the earliest evaluations were
conducted at the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory and
involved caffeine comparisons with the amphetamine
called Benzedrine. This interest was stimulated by the
use of methamphetamine by the Germans during the
early years of the Blitzkrieg.
Harris R. Lieberman, Jessica Cail, and Karl E.
Friedl report that the U.S. Army issued Benzedrine
to servicemen during the war, mainly as 5-mg tablets, though inhalers were also available.14 The Army
continued to use amphetamines even after other
countries such as Germany and the United Kingdom
were beginning to recognize problems from unrestricted use of the drugs.15 Studies published after the
war noted concerns about impaired judgment and
willingness to continue nonproductive or dangerous
performance. Studies also found that amphetamine,
as opposed to caffeine and modanifil, increased
risk-taking while prolonged wakefulness increasingly
impaired judgment.16
Withdrawal symptoms of amphetamine consisted
primarily of mental fatigue, mental depression, and
increased appetite. Symptoms lasted for days with
occasional use and for weeks or months with chronic
use, with severity dependent on the length of time
and the amount of amphetamine used. Withdrawal
symptoms also included anxiety, agitation, excessive
sleep, vivid or lucid dreams, and thoughts of suicide.17
So what was the ethical problem of giving amphetamines to combat soldiers in World War II? With the
eventual understanding of their effects, under what
combat conditions did the short-term benefits of being alert and awake overrule the ethical issue of possible amphetamine addiction? Similar conundrums

already complicate consideration of future potential
enhancements.

The Ethical Problem
With the possibilities of several types of enhancements to the warrior in the near future,
what are some possible future ethical challenges?
According to William D. Casebeer, “ethical questions are normative questions. They deal with what
we ought to do, what is permitted in good and right
thought and conduct, and what kind of people we
ought to be.”18
The Oxford Dictionaries Online define ethics “as
moral principles that govern a person’s or group’s
behavior.” 19 Combat ethics define the allowable
actions in warfare. The Department of Defense
Dictionary of Military and Association Terms has
neither a definition of ethics, combat ethics, nor
enhancement.20
Ethics are not new to the soldier in combat. The
Geneva Conventions and other treaties aid in defining what is ethical and not ethical in combat. What
is new is the coming onslaught of technologies that
will bring ethical questions about enhanced soldiers
in combat operations.
New ethical challenges are arising from the
technological developments in stem cells, genetics,
neurosciences, robotics, and information technology. Lawrence Hinman of the Center for Ethics in
Science and Technology, University of San Diego,
reports that “these developments have created ethical vacuums, situations in which our technology has
outstripped our ethical framework.”21 This statement, although made in 2008, remains true. In fact,
current military references to enhanced soldiers are
very limited.

Enhanced Warrior War Story—1993

M

any Somali men, particularly the young men who cruised around Mog[adishu] on “technicals,” vehicles with .50-caliber machine guns bolted in back, were addicted to khat, a mild amphetamine that
looks like watercress. Mid-afternoon was the height of the daily cycle. Most started chewing at about noon,
and by late afternoon were wired, jumpy, and raring to go.
—Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1999), 21.

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January-February 2015  MILITARY REVIEW