[Hplusroadmap] Fwd: Re: [wta-talk] Boing Boing: "Debate round brain enhancement"

[Bryan Bishop]

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: Re: [wta-talk] Boing Boing: "Debate round brain enhancement"
Date: Monday 10 March 2008
From: Bryan Bishop <kanzure at gmail.com>
To: World Transhumanist Association Discussion List 
<wta-talk at transhumanism.org>

On Monday 10 March 2008, James Clement wrote:
> FYI - for anyone who's interested, a few months back I had Will
> Block, President of Life Enhancement Products (disclosure - I provide
> consulting services to LEP) speak at my Silicon Valley Transhumanist
> Meetup Group about one of his favorite topics - Nootropics.  He gave
> what I thought was an excellent PowerPoint presentation called "From
> Grain to Grin: Nootropics, Past, Present & Future."  The PowerPoint
> is available on his company's homepage for download at
> www.life-enhancement.com.  Go to the lower right-hand corner of the
> page under "Highlights" to find it.

Yikes, 23 megabytes. Here's the content:



 From Grain 
 to GRIN
Nootropics: 
Past, Present, and Future



The Fertile Crescent:
From 9000 BCE 


Ingwersen J, Defeyter MA, Kennedy DO, Wesnes KA, Scholey AB.
A low glycaemic index breakfast cereal preferentially prevents 
children's cognitive performance from declining throughout the morning.
Appetite. 2007 Jul;49(1):240-4. Epub 2007 Jan 16.

Cognition and Communication Research Centre, Division of Psychology, 
University of Northumbria, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK.

This study investigated whether the glycaemic index (GI) of breakfast 
cereal differentially affects children's attention and memory. Using a 
balanced cross-over design, on two consecutive mornings 64 children 
aged 6-11 years were given a high GI cereal and a low GI cereal in a 
counterbalanced order. They performed a series of computerised tests of 
attention and memory, once prior to breakfast and three times following 
breakfast at hourly intervals. The results indicate that children's 
performance declines throughout the morning and that this decline can 
be significantly reduced following the intake of a low GI cereal as 
compared with a high GI cereal on measures of accuracy of attention 
(M=-6.742 and -13.510, respectively, p<0.05) and secondary memory 
(M=-30.675 and -47.183, respectively, p<0.05).
[Emphasis added.] 


Yellow Emperor and Writing
Huang-ti (27th century BCE)
The Agricultural Revolution took root on the North China Plain
It was during Huang-ti's age that the most ancient Chinese writing 
was "invented"  
Ephedra sinica tea was the official beverage of Huang-ti’s court
Ephedra has memory enhancement properties that have been directly 
associated with handwriting1 
1 Gruenewald G, Muecher H. On The effect of central function activation 
on motor patterns of handwriting. Psychopharmacologia 1964 Apr 
3;5:372-89. 
Birthing Pharmacology
Less than one thousand years later (about 2000 BCE), ephedrine was first 
extracted from ephedra. 
The Chinese called it Kim Iya, after the colors of the dragon (red and 
gold) which represented immortality. 
This was Arabicized by pre-Islamic Arabs trading in silk with China as 
Kimiya whence arose Al-Kimiya and finally Al-chemy, which through the 
mind of Paracelsus gave birth to Western pharmacology and, ultimately, 
biomedical science as we know it.
Indus Valley: From 7000 BCE 
Barley and wheat were the first harvested foods of the Indus Valley, as 
was the case in the Fertile Crescent.
Yet origins of the Indus script-like signs dates from 3300-2800 BCE, 
about the same time as China.
This was about 4000 years after the appearance of writing in the Fertile 
Crescent. 
Bacopa and Vedic Poems
Ancient stories identify certain plants used traditionally as brain or 
nerve tonics in the folklore of Indian medicine. One of the most 
popular of these neurotonics is Bacopa monniera.
Recalling the Mahabharata 
Within the Vedic epics is the Mahabharata, which contains about 100,000 
couplets. 
It is the longest poem ever written. 
Bacopa is reputed to have played a role in increasing the ability to 
memorize these great epic poems. 
Homer’s Stories
During the late 8th, early 7th century B.C. in Hellenic Greece, the 
blind poet Homer collected stories that he deemed worth preserving.
He wove them into wholes that he perfected in oral performances. 
And when the lessons of his epic tales, The Iliad and The Odyssey, were 
written down, the importance of their messages were permanently stamped 
into history. 
The Eleusinian Mysteries
The Iliad covers a time about 3,200 years ago and The Odyssey about 300 
years later. 
At that time the Eleusinian Mysteries were in full sail. 
Within its rituals, the anointed heads of the ancient Mediterranean 
elite — young women as well as young men — were initiated into 
adulthood by partaking of a mind-altering substance, the claviceps 
purpurea.
This fungus grew on rye planted in the fields of Eleusis (and ware also 
contaminate of wild barley at the birth the agricultural revolution).
The Origin of Consciousness
All of this is brilliantly covered in The Road To Eleusis: Unveiling the 
Secret of the Mysteries by Ruck, Hofmann, and Wasson, and it’s as good 
a hypothesis in regard to the creation of modern consciousness as any.
That includes (and embraces to a degree) Julian Jaynes’ The Origin of 
Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. 
Homer’s Memorialization
Homer is thought to have created his two surviving epics between 725 and 
675 BCE. He didn’t write them down, Others did, perhaps not more than a 
decade or two after their creation. 
In these epics, Homer memorializes tales about substances that are, in 
and of themselves, nootropics— compounds that turn the mind and have 
positive effects on purposive consciousness. 
The Odyssey: A Different Hero
While Odysseus — the King of Ithaca (aka Ulysses)—is a secondary 
character of Homer’s first epic tale, he is the man who’s idea enables 
the Greeks to take Troy, and win the Trojan Wars.
Yet in tale two, Odysseus is prime, and proclaimed the defender of 
memory and the enemy of forgetfulness.

Circe’s Lust for Memory
In one specific tale of The Odyssey, Odysseus encounters the sorceress 
Circe, when he and his crew show up on her island. 
But they don’t make the same mistake of an earlier tale when they all 
were caught in the cave of Cyclops, who almost ate them. 
Instead they split in two, Odysseus staying with the ship, and 23 of the 
crew— an interesting number—while the other 23 go inland. 
Circe Interference
Circe wines and dines the crew, on a banquet laced with henbane (aka 
thorn apple).
Henbane contains atropine, an anti-cholinergic compound that prevents 
the memory system from operating properly.

Circe’s Alzheimer’s Curse
Moreover, henbane is a deleriant, causing reality confusion. 
So when the crew of Odysseus ingest it, they lose track of where they 
are, and lose their memories of the home land, their mission, their 
wives, and their families. 
They end up groveling in the mud, behaving very much like people in an 
advanced stage of Alzheimer’s disease. 
A Bouquet of Early Flowers
Fortunately, one of the Argonauts chooses not to indulge. Thus not under 
Circe’s sway, he breaks away, returning to the ship.
As soon as he tells his Commander about the tragic turn of events, 
Odysseus sets off to rescue his crew. 
While passing through a 
forest glen, he is approached 
by a young man — Hermes, 
the messenger of the Gods 
— who swoops down to the 
floor of the forest and tears 
from the earth a bouquet of 
early flowers, with white 
petals and black bulb, 
presenting them to 
Odysseus.
Holy Memory
To Odysseus says Hermes: “Moly the gods call it, but it is hard for 
mortal men to dig; howbeit with the gods all things are possible.” 
Armed with the ingested Moly and a suggested strategy by Hermes, 
Odysseus meets up with Circe whose power is impotent to control him 
because he has the antidote to henbane in his body. 
Holy Circe
And so history, only briefly disrupted and not memory-paralyzed, goes 
on. 
Twenty-three years ago, an investigation into what Moly really might 
have been determined that it was Galanthus nivalis, a plant that 
contains galantamine.
Starting in the 1940s, Captain Marvel comic books popularized the 
expression SHAZAM [the “M” is for Mercury (aka Hermes)] and Holy Moly.
Well, now you know what it means. Holy Moly is sacred memory.
The Preservation of Memory
To underscore the importance of Moly, a new translation of The Odyssey 
by Stanley Lombardo, does not open as does Robert Fagles’ celebrated 
version, with “Sing to me of the man, Muse”, it begins differently.
In Lombardo’s translation, the epic begins: “Speak, Memory.” 
Surely this is more than a poetic device. It underscores the true 
mission of The Odyssey—the preservation of memory.
In Search of a Dementia Cure
A modern beginning of interest in nootropics would inevitably be the 
work of Dr. Albert Hofmann and his work with alkaloids at Sandoz 
Pharmaceuticals in Switzerland in the 1930s.
Hofmann was searching for something that could be effective for 
improving peripheral circulation and cerebral function in the control 
of geriatric disorders such as dementia. 
On the Road to Hydergine . . . LSD
During the late ‘30s and early ‘40s, far less was known about how the 
brain operates, least of all what caused memory loss. 
Remarkably, Hofmann’s pursuit of the properties of ergot on his way to 
the creation of the path-breaking drug hydergine—the first modern drug 
for Alzheimer’s disease—led to his synthesizing a compound called 
lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD-25 in 1938.
Boomer Awaking Generation 

And five years later in 1943 he stumbled across its beguiling 
properties.
So that’s really the beginning of the era, and the year given by some as 
the start of the Boomer or the most recent Spiritual Awaking 
Generation. 
With excitement generated in part from the turn of the tide in the War—
it had become clear that Fascism would be defeated—many studies 
followed, created by Sandoz researchers and others. 
My Own Awakening
I remember my own awakening to a lot of this material in the early ‘80s 
when I first visited the New York Academy of Medicine’s great 
biomedical library on upper Fifth Avenue in New York City.
There I found an unbelievable wealth of papers on hydergine … items that 
are still not listed for the most part in the electronic biomedical 
databases (although that’s just now changing).

Hydergine as Nootropic
The first word I had on hydergine as nootropic was probably the way that 
most people found out … through Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw. 
I had read their article “Mind Food” in a 1979 issue of Omni magazine in 
which they mentioned it and then in their inestimable book Life 
Extension — A Practical Scientific Approach. 
They had been talking about it for several years earlier and championed 
its use for theoretical thought. 
Hydergine Benefits
Among the things hydergine can do is increase neurite growth, the 
connection between nerve cells, which it accomplishes by orchestrating 
the release of neural growth factors. 
Other benefits of hydergine include increasing the firing rate of locus 
coeruleus neurons, reducing the buildup of lipofuscin (aging pigment) 
in the brain, and helping the brain recover from hypoxic damage. 

The Ability to Focus Intensely
While Hofmann wasn’t involved with arginine-vasopressin (brand name 
Diapid), this was another Sandoz nootropic.
Specifically, vasopressin has been shown to improve memory consolidation 
in various mnemonic tasks and to increase the speed of sensory-motor 
mechanisms, resulting in the ability to focus intensely in the 
immediate moment. 
When Every Judgment is Critical
I once worked with a group of mountain climbers who were stalking three 
of the largest peaks in the Himalayas. 
For their most perilous overhangs, where the placement of every finger 
is critical and every judgment must be decisive, vasopressin 
(winterized for the cold) proved invaluable under extreme conditions 
like getting to the top of … ultimately Everest.

Life Flashed Before My Eyes
Vasopressin is a synthetic endogenous peptide which plays a normal role 
in a variety of different functions including blood pressure and 
control of urine volume, but it is also a learning molecule. 
About vasopressin’s most 
amazing property is its “my 
whole life flashed before my 
eyes” role, what many have 
reported in an accident when 
in the smallest possible instant, 
they review all of who they are 
and what they’ve experienced 
throughout their entire lives. 
This is thought to be caused by a massive vasopressin release. 
As far as the mechanism is concern, vasopressin activates receptors in 
the post-synaptic membrane of cholinergic neurons inducing a transient 
flush of cholinergic communication. 
Extreme focus, anyone?
Concentration’s Second Wind
In a way, the second wind experienced by athletes, that is brought about 
by a spurt of adrenaline, is somewhat parallel albeit for a different 
system — the adrenergic system. 
Vasopressin works within the cholinergic system in much this same way. 
It gives you that second wind of concentration and focus. But it’s 
brief, lasting mere seconds.
Yet it can be enough to indelibly mark an idea or experience. 
Bromocriptine: L-Dopa Agonist
Over the years, research into the ergotamine preparations resulted in 
other nootropics, including bromocriptine in the ‘70s—which grew out of 
the work of Hofmann’s Sandoz mentor Arthur Stoll — for Parkinson’s 
disease.
Sandoz was the most exciting pharmaceutical company of the time, and 
there are stories that to reach upper management, you had to experience 
the powers of the mind that only repeated experience with LSD could 
unleash.
Nootropica
Poster Children for Nootropics
Many of the neurochemical deficits treated by piracetam and its 
molecular family depend on changes of membrane properties, including 
fluidity. 
Thus it is possible that piracetam modifies membrane properties. But 
this is still uncertain even after 30 years of research. Over that 
period, there have been a great many evolutions of the racetams. 
The latest is called levetiracetam, and it’s used largely for seizures, 
and clearly with some benefit. In fact, that’s probably the racetam 
that’s gotten most of the billing these days and it appears to prevent 
over-firing or the electrical storm patterns that are associated with 
seizure type activity. 
Low Toxicity
Yet the thing that is quite clear is the very low toxicity of the 
piracetams. Which is why they have become poster children for all 
nootropics.
 Yet unfortunately, while there are literally hundreds and hundreds of 
papers about the items, its benefits have never been clearly shown in 
healthy individuals. Instead, the clinical studies show that it 
benefits those recovering from stroke, chemical and physical assaults 
to the brain, and the like. 
Thus sadly, this work has not yet been done. 

Slowing Down Brain Aging
By the way, piracetam’s ability to increase 
transhemispheric traffic is due to its influence 
on the GABAnergic system and quite 
possible the Corpus callosum — the bridge 
between the cerebral hemispheres — which 
is also thought to be enhanced by the nutrient 
acetyl L-carnitine.
Another hope is that the racetams may be 
able to slow down brain aging, and perhaps 
even reverse age-related mental decline.  
So with each added decade a person can 
look forward to being smarter, including all 
that goes along with that: i.e., better 
reflexes, alertness, vigilance, and so on.  
Although the “memory pharmas” are honing in on their target of better 
memory for normal folks here in the U.S., as of today, they have not 
established any track records.
Up Transhumanism’s Alley
The exciting potential benefits the racetams have are right up the alley 
of Transhumanism, owing to their ability to normalize the brain by 
protecting, enhancing, and helping to integrate its functions. 
Racetams may bilaterally integrate the brain — horizontally across 
hemispheres and vertically via cerebral connection of the hippocampus. 
They exercise tonic control of the limbic system. 
Thus they may be able to 
prevent our limbic passions 
and desires from 
overwhelming and running 
away with us — the limbic 
system is often called the 
“horse brain”— as in 
crimes of passion. 
The Writing is On the Wall
The biggest barrier to 
overcome — for nootropics, 
smart drugs, or memory 
enhancers to arrive in the 
pharmaceutical realm — is the 
problem of category, because 
the FDA only recognizes drugs 
for diseases. 
But the writing is on the wall . . . 
and even though they can’t bring 
a drug to market for people who 
don’t have a disease, the issue 
will be skirted. 
It will be done by widening the category of disease to include those 
previously believed to be normal, just as when normal cholesterol 
levels were lowered the market for the statins increased dramatically. 
Viagra for the Brain
One of the most interesting seed-derived—flower credited— nootropic 
nutrients is vinpocetine, which is derived from a common garden flower, 
the periwinkle (Vinca minor). The use of this flowing plant goes back 
at least to the Greek physician Dioscorides in the 1st Century whose 
seminal work De Materia Medica is one of the great works of medical 
herbalism. 
Vinpocetine is a full spectrum cognitive enhancer because it yields 
benefits for the eyes and ears as well as the brain. 
Interesting enough, vinpocetine is an alkaloid that inhibits a class of 
enzymes known as phosphodiesterases, of which there are at least 11 
different kinds. One of these plays a role in the spongy tissue of the 
penis (and clitoris) and is inhibited by Viagra and another in specific 
to the brain and is inhibited by vinpocetine. So, in effect, 
vinpocetine is Viagra for the brain.
Mental Acuity
What does vinpocetine do? Chief among its mechanisms is its ability to 
increase blood flow and help distribute oxygen and glucose in the 
brain, as well as in the fine capillaries of the ears and eyes. 
By so doing, it increases sensory and brain functionality. As well, it 
enhances mental acuity, and also improves alertness and preparedness 
skills in cognitively impaired adults. 
On top of all that, vinpocetine is capable of improving both long-term 
and short-term memory skills in a range of subjects.
Nutrition You Can Feel
By now, everyone’s heard of smart drinks. But most are bogus. True 
versions are precursor plus cofactor formulations.    These are 
verily “nutrition you can feel.” 
One of these used the amino acid phenylalanine, the precursor to 
noradrenaline, the brain’s version of adrenaline, plus co-factors.  
Earth Girl called her version Psuper Cybertonic but it was (and is) also 
well known as Blast or Wow. Another smart drink was (and is) called 
Focus or 
Memory Upgrade, and it consists of choline plus nutrition cofactors, 
which are needed to produce acetylcholine in the brain. 
3.5 Billion Years of Service
Acetylcholine is a neuro-transmitter and it’s been around on planet 
Earth for about 3.5 billion years because it is essential for proper 
memory function including focus and concentration, in virtually all 
species. 
Alzheimer’s patients and most, if not all, CNS diseases are 
character-ized by deficiencies in acetylcholine among other problems.

Foods Inhibits Smart Benefits
Interesting enough, all of the nutrients in the smart drink realm appear 
in the normal diet, but they don’t appear packaged in a way so that we 
can use them optimally. 
For example, if you dine on a hamburger and a shake for lunch you’re 
going to get about the same amount of phenylalanine that you’d get in a 
glass of BLAST. 
However, the hamburger and the shake—unlike BLAST—won’t provide you with 
the cofactors needed to produce a sizable boost in noradrenaline . . . 
and moreover, some of the other proteins in the meal yield other amino 
acids that compete with phenylalanine — pigging out the transporter 
seats on the ferry that crosses the blood-brain-barrier — thus 
preventing the smart benefits.
Intermediate Metabolic Pathways
You’re not going to get the 
smart rise from your food 
unless it’s specifically 
designed to do that, and 
this isn’t easy to do. 
It requires an intimate 
knowledge of the 
intermediate metabolic 
pathways of the body and 
how the components of 
food get utilized. You 
have to make sure that 
the right amount of the 
precursors and cofactors 
show up at the right place 
at the right time without 
getting used up or 
bottlenecked. 
Most food is a drag on our mental faculties.
Plants Are Package Deals
Plants are often a compromise, because they don’t really like to be 
eaten and don’t really regard us as their friends. 
So a plant, for example, when it’s eaten by insects tries to tox the 
insect out with its own 
naturally produced pesticides 
and also with enzymes that 
basically gives the bug an 
upset stomach and causes 
it to drop off. 
So similarly, most foods are a 
package deal such that the 
nutrients they contain are 
rarely sufficient and usually 
far from ideal. They may even 
offset any benefit.
Plants Don’t Make Good Friends
For example, even with something like vinpocetine, there are some 
compounds in the periwinkle that can have deleterious effects. This is 
undoubtedly true of all plants. 
The question is, to what degree?  
Cinnamon contains polymers 
that are highly beneficial for 
controlling blood sugar 
levels, yet cinnamon 
contains coumarin, a fat 
soluble substance, enough 
of which can make you a 
bleeder … not to mention its 
cytotoxic 
qualities.

Redesigning Foods
The “alchemical” trick is to isolate the right active ingredients and 
their mechanisms, and to redesign foods.  And to do this properly you 
often have to scrap most of it, or at least a lot of it. Especially, if 
you’re seeking out a nootropics effect. 
And it’s a hard thing to do on another count … because you want food to 
taste good. There’s a lot of pleasure involved in food and a way that a 
lot of people solve these things is to take memory supplements rather 
than picking and choosing among compromised choices.
When the most active items are extracted or synthesized and put together 
in a rational way, they can really serve our needs and provide great 
benefit.
Feed Your Head
How does one distinguish 
between drugs that give you a 
lift when you need it and those 
that actually enhance your 
memory and cognition over time, 
items that you take on a daily 
basis?  
There’s a great body of literature 
out there about the role of drugs 
and how they affect the mind, 
not all of it good.
When you start with nutrients, it’s a lot safer, and I say this even 
though I am pro-drug. Drugs can be good thing but there are a lot of 
pitfalls in using them.  And the literature is complex and often 
insufficient. 
So the idea is to feed your head the right types of food that it needs 
for your central nervous system — that’s the mind food part of it. 
Preserve and Protect
Preserve what you have by protecting against those processes of aging 
that result in the breakdown of the components of memory, such as 
neurotransmitters, neuromodulators, neurohormones, and such.
It’s also important to prevent free radical damage and inflammatory 
processes in the brain. And then once you’re taking care of all of 
those, then it’s time to move into direct enhancement.  As the years go 
by, it gets harder. 
Uptake Declines with Age
The difficulties arise because as we age, our delivery system becomes 
much less efficient. Take, for example, choline—remember, it’s the 
precursor for acetylcholine—nutrient found in fish and eggs which, by 
the way, are problematic foods because there’s toxicity in fish, and 
fat and cholesterol in eggs. With age, as a recent article in The 
Lancet points out, the ability of choline to pass into the brain where 
it’s made into acetylcholine diminishes substantially. 
Consequently, instead of getting by with what was perfectly fine when 
you were young — a few hundred milligrams per day — you now need a few 
grams of it. Now we’re talking about a factor of anywhere of say six to 
eight or even ten times more to be sure that you get the same amount. 
And if you don’t get enough choline in your brain for proper memory 
function, your brain begins to tear down the lipid membranes of your 
brain cells that contain choline in the form of a phospholipids … and 
that’s very undesirable.  
So this is where I think you want to start before you get into all of 
these other items, like hydergine, even though they may have proved 
valuable over a long period of time.
The Star of Hydergine is Fading
As you can imagine, the level of politics among pharmaceutical companies 
jockeying for new positions in this area is a four-legged marathon. 
There were a series of studies that were done at levels of dosing that 
were far too low to achieve any significant effect and so hydergine was 
dismissed. 
Sandoz had also lost the patent and sales had dropped of over the years, 
so they didn’t have the impetus to defend it. The New England Journal 
of Medicine published a study with I think 2-3 milligrams of hydergine. 
Yet none of the studies done previously had showed clear benefit for 
anything below 6-9 milligrams and some were far higher … so who knows. 
I suspect that it has to do with the manipulation by various drug 
companies clamoring for something new that they can patent.  Everybody 
knows that story and now with our new perspective on things…
Trillion Dollar Drug
Regarding the production of 
new or improved memory 
substances:
There is obviously a lot of 
good work being done by 
upstart pharmaceutical 
companies focusing on a 
new generation of memory 
enhancers, and the first one 
to land a big memory “drug” for healthy individuals is going to going to 
have a multi-billion dollar product. But before it lands, they’re going 
to have to redefine the notion of memory disease.
This would be a larger mass market than Alzheimer’s, which is fairly 
substantial.
The Therapeutic State
A real mass market and they’re going for it by floating a concept called 
Mild Cognitive Impairment. And not everybody who has Mild Cognitive 
Impairment — when memory starts to slide and you can’t always remember 
where you left your car keys — which starts for many people in their 
their 40s or 50s  gets Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, Parkinson’s, or 
Huntington’s disease or whatever. 
The idea here is to extend the market so that instead of a few million 
people with Alzheimer’s disease, you now have several tens of millions 
of people with Mild Cognitive Impairment with, I suppose, the eventual 
hope of extending to everyone. As mentioned, we’ve seen that kind of 
progression with the statins. 
Psychopharmacological World 
It will be similar to depression and ADD, and within the context of the 
system, this can be kind of a liberating thing.  
I think the right way to look at the trends of the world, however much 
you may be opposed to any particular one, is always to realize that 
there’s an opposing trend to it. So that whatever negatives are built 
into it, you need to practice Eastern martial arts. You use the force 
that’s thrown at you to serve your interest, to work in your favor. 
Basically, you shift yourself so that you can utilize the forces. And I 
think that’s what we have to do as well in the psychopharmacological 
world. 
Exempt from the Constitution
Re the current dynamic with the government regarding nutritional 
supplements:
There was some initial trouble when galantamine was first introduced 
back in 2000. The FDA wanted proof that galantamine had been sold as a 
supplement because they had given it drug status. But after we 
presented our evidence through a paper storm of affidavits, it was 
clear that it had been grandfathered under DSHEA and they finally 
stopped bothering us. 
This is a good sign . . . that there is some level of respect for the 
rule of law, even in Washington.
Sadly, most bureaucrats at the FDA and elsewhere in government don’t 
think that the Bill of Rights applies to them … they believe that 
they’re exempt from the Constitution. 
Cognitive Liberty
The government is far from omniscient. There’s the SNAFU principle — 
reflecting that bureaucracies are really inefficient … and fortunately 
for us or we’d really be in trouble.  Particularly with regard to 
something that I really regard as a fundamental right … cognitive 
liberty is really the core issue here. 
To be able to freely use our minds for whatever we see fit and to 
enhance it. So long as it’s not interfering with anybody else’s equal 
right to enhance his or her mind … or not to.
Mocking Users
There are a lot of people around who just assume this stuff doesn’t 
work.
Well there’s a type of study known as a deficiency study that makes it 
very clear what role certain nutrients and amino acids play with regard 
to memory. What researchers do is give a control group and an 
experimental group the same substance minus one compound, say the amino 
acid tryptophan. 
Then they conduct a series of tests and it’s 
absolutely clear. No one has ever challenged 
that type of study when it’s properly done. 
And there are a lot of them out there. So 
much for the mockers and uninformed 
skeptics. Read the literature!  Don’t talk 
about what you haven’t read and haven’t 
thought through. 
Scientific Impresario
I see myself as a scientific impresario. I’m a 
literate person who is excited by a lot of different things and I find 
that I’m able to learn a lot of languages rapidly. 
So I’m a generalist and not a master of any subject, but I know a lot 
about many subjects. One keys to understanding what’s going on in the 
biomedical world is the ability to step into the streams of 
seemingly-alien concepts in which a lot of in-house terminology is 
used, in which scientists are typically talking to other scientists. 
They’re certainly not talking to the public, although they may be 
talking to medical administrators or doctors. 
But when they’re talking to themselves, which is the form in which most 
of the new literature originally appears, they’re using their own 
special languages. 
How I Got to Do What I Do
When I started off in the computer world back in the early ‘60s I found 
that I could learn to code in different languages very rapidly. I never 
became an elegant coder, but I could step into most situations and see 
what they were.  This has given me a distinct advantage. 
In 1970 I read a book called The Youth Doctors by Patrick McGrady about 
live-cell therapy in Switzerland and other therapies to stay young. And 
I continued to read up on the subject, and then I read a book by Jerome 
Tuccili called Here Comes Immortality.
And that awakened me to a whole other level of possibilities and finally 
when I met up with Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw, the people who wrote 
Life Extension, I realized that opportunity was calling. Getting 
involved brought together many of the things that I liked to do. Durk 
and Sandy told me — something that I suspected to be true but had never 
formalized — that they viewed themselves as artists as much as 
scientists and that really wore well with me, having worked as a video 
director and producer for awhile.  
Clearer and Clearer
They’re truly scientists and I’m not. But I’m competent to read the 
scientific literature at a certain level and I’m able to get to things 
fast.
Archive retrieval is something I’ve always liked doing. Locating things. 
I always love going to libraries because it’s fun to find things, to 
find out. And when I learned how to work with electronic biomedical 
search tools I found that I could find things much faster than before 
and that it provided me with a lot of delight. 
First I started solving medical problems of my own and for my loved ones 
and family and I primed myself for moving in this area. 
I was fascinated as well with the idea that I could improve myself and 
make myself smarter. A scientist who I’ve known for a great 
many years said to me the other day: “I’ve been reading 
your stuff over the last two decades and your writing 
keeps getting better and better. Your stuff is clearer 
and clearer.” 
I hear that a lot, in different ways. Better and better; 
clearer and clearer. So I must be doing something right, 
and my strong suspicion is that it’s the smart nutrients 
and the smart drugs I use on a daily basis. 
5-HTP is a Brain Food 
My diligence is paying off from the fairly structured program of taking 
an array of smart nutrients — including vitamins, amino acids, 
prohormones, and such — as well as select smart drugs. Some of the 
substances I take are for special purposes.  My company was the first 
to market 5-hydroxy-
tryptophan (5-HTP) which is a more immediate 
precursor to serotonin than tryptophan. Fortunately, 
because there have been times in my recent life 
when having higher levels of serotonin has saved 
my life. 
Serotonin is an inhibitory neurotransmitter that all of 
the latest generation of antidepressants works on. 
These antidepressants are know as SSRIs for 
selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and they 
provide a different way of maintaining a level of 
serotonin in the synapses for availability so that they 
can be reutilized and recycled rather than retired. 
The old antidepressants, the MAO inhibitors were 
much more like that but far less selective, basically 
blocking the body’s ability to excrete a seriously 
damaged serotonergic molecule, so that you ended 
up with junk serotonin floating around. With SSRI’s 
you get more mileage out of some aspects of serotonin, selectively. 
5-HTP is a lot cleaner; it really is a brain food. 

Not Being Dragged Under
When I became anxious or depressed, rather than to let events be in 
charge of my life, I used 5-HTP along with other items to help make it 
work better. 
So 5-HTP gave me the natural sedative, calming, relaxing effects that 
enabled me to work while not being dragged under by the incidentals 
that were out of my control but certainly not 
consequential to what 
it is to be alive.

This Toolkit is For You
As an example of the benefits of brain nutrition, I’d like to mention 
the Mind Food Brain Maintenance Toolkit. This is the most extraordinary 
smart nutrient package we have ever put out. 
Durk and Sandy are the designers of the Toolkit, and it brings together 
a number of items that I’ve designed independently, such as 
GalantaMind, but it goes far beyond. I deeply believe that this 
extraordinary Toolkit deserves everyone’s attention. 
So if you’re looking for a sharper, more alive, more brilliant, and 
long-lasting mind, this is for you. 

Don’t Miss the Singularity
And if you’ve been following this presentation because you really want 
to preserve your mind … and you don’t want to end up becoming a 
vegetable in your old age … and the Alzheimer’s disease figures keep 
increasing where at the age of 65 it’s a small percentage, and at 75 
it’s larger, and then at the age of 85 it starts to become universal… 
take action now, and give Durk & Sandy’s “far-in” work the attention it 
deserves. 
Go to our website, and read up. As you know, the data indicate that 
people are living longer and longer and the number of centenarians are 
increasing rapidly … so if you intend to be one of these long-lifers, 
there is certainly something that you need to do … and that is to take 
care of your brain, now.

- Bryan
________________________________________
Bryan Bishop
http://heybryan.org/

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________________________________________
Bryan Bishop
http://heybryan.org/