The Independent New drug developed which can reverse the effects of tiredness

"A new drug that can reverse the effects of tiredness in the brain has been discovered by US scientists.

Research in monkeys suggests the drug can temporarily boost mental performance by targeting chemical receptors.

Scientists hope the drug could prove invaluable to shift workers such as doctors and soldiers."

Nature Medicine Lifestyle drug market booming

"Lifestyle drugs—medicines that treat conditions associated with lifestyle such as weight-loss tablets, anti-smoking agents, impotence therapies and hair restorers—are now a major research and development area for the pharmaceutical industry. In fact, companies have invested over $20 billion in research into such drugs since the 1990s. The reason why is clear: the market lifestyle for drugs is forecast to rise to over $29 billion by 2007 from its current $20 billion.

The market is driven predominantly by Western countries, where an image-conscious, aging society is prepared to pay high prices for compounds that promise to slow the aging process, improve mental agility, reduce weight gain and rejuvenate sexual function."

British Medical Journal Lifestyle medicines - Education and Debate

"Where to draw the line between lifestyle purposes and legitimate medical use is debated vigorously. Lifestyle drugs are intended or come to be used for conditions that currently lie at the socially constructed boundary between lifestyle wishes and health needs. A lifestyle wish often becomes a health problem when a biomedical cause (for example, a biochemical or genetic factor) or a treatment is found for the "problem." Lifestyle wishes are then portrayed as amenable to health care--medical intervention that can remove responsibility or control from the individual or society. Healthcare professionals may then "claim" the condition by defining the need for treatment at the level of collective policy making and at the individual doctor-patient level.

As the availability of a treatment can convert a lifestyle wish into a health need, the pharmaceutical industry then becomes a key player in the process of medicalisation."

Dallas Morning News Ellen Goodman: Life vs. lifestyle

" At the heart of it, this is a conversation about rationing disguised as a conversation about lifestyle drugs. I don't know anyone who thinks the government should pay for hair replacement drugs, nail fungus treatments, or cosmetic surgery. But what exactly is a lifestyle drug? Is there a difference between medicine that enhances our ''lifestyle" and our ''quality of life," and our life itself?

King said Medicare and Medicaid are only for life-saving drugs. But where do we draw that line? A drug that reduces the nausea from chemo doesn't save lives. Reconstructive breast surgery after a mastectomy doesn't save a life. A nose job to meet beauty standards may be a lifestyle choice, but what about a nose job after a car accident? When is a cataract operation lifesaving and when is it ''merely" life-enhancing?

While we are on the subject, if you lose your sense of taste, should the public pay for a cure? How is that pleasure different from sexual pleasure? Bioethicist Art Caplan calls the debate about Grandpa and Viagra "Puritanism masquerading as medicine.""