By Sujatha Balasubramanian, published in The Mirror, November 1966

Here it is, at last. The miracle drug that mankind has been waiting for all these years! The wonders of penicillin, the marvels of the antibiotics, what are they compared to RNA, the memory medication?

If anything can revolutionize the entire life of the world, it is this, the fabulous injection which can transfer memories from one living creature to another.

A batch of rats is trained to go for the food at the sound of a signal. An injection from the brain cells of these rats is given to another, untrained group of rats. With extraordinary perception, the second batch responds to the same signals without ever having been trained! It may not be very long before this drug comes into universal use, and human beings start using it. We can imagine the stupendous consequences of such a discovery.

A recalcitrant student will not be moping behind a pile of books on the evening of the exams. On the contrary, he will cut as many classes as possible before the end of the term and enjoy himself without a single thought about his lessons. All he will have to do is go and get himself a few injections of RNA the day before the exam, picking whichever teacher’s brains that would suit him.

Then, he can stride into the examination hall and blithely start answering all the questions straight away. Now, he knows as much as his teacher does! And if the effect of the drug lasts for only a few hours, all the better for him. Who on earth wants to be saddled with all that knowledge after the exam?

The housewife would not need to worry anymore about learning to cook or sew. A little prick, and presto, the Cordon Bleu expert will be working inside her mind. Deliciously light soufflés and luscious gateaux will pop out of her oven as if by magic! The next week, she may want to try her hand at home dressmaking, wondering whether to choose a Christian Dior or a Chanel injection.

Those dramatic stories of emergency life-saving operations performed by cabin-boys, one would never hear them anymore. A phial of RNA and he erstwhile cabin-boy will be transformed into the world’s best surgeon in a matter of minutes and the scalpel will sink into the flesh as if into butter.

Soon, I can see chemists stocked with shelves upon shelves of RNA, marked and codified into various categories. Starting from A- Aircraft, flying of, through B- Ballet dancing, C- Curing of tobacco, down to Y- Yachts, sailing of, and Z- zoo keeping, sub-division (3) Lions special. One can have one’s pick of the leading brains in the world for the price of an injection.

“Do you think they will be able to make the memory drug soon?” asks my teenage daughter, looking up from her pile of notes. “At least before next year, before my final exam?” she asks wistfully.

“Maybe”, I reply, thinking of the speed with which things happen these days. I should personally like to have a course in P- Pickling, my grandmother’s way, and perhaps a little music- Subbalaxmi style?

---

Editor’s note:

In late 1965, four independent labs reported successful memory-transfer experiments using rats, based on the work of James V. McConnell, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. McConnell posited that memory could be transferred chemically through something called “memory-RNA.” Memory-RNA, McConnell suggested, was a special form of RNA — the intermediary form of genetic information that fills the gap between DNA and proteins — that could store long-term memories outside the brain. Many attempted to replicate McConnell’s memory transfer findings. Some replicated his findings, but many did not. Despite a few compelling demonstrations of memory transfer, McConnell’s research was eventually dismissed as a failure (Rilling, 1996).

… like dormant memories, James McConnell’s ideas have now resurfaced. In 2015, Levin, a developmental biologist at Tufts University, spent four years and over a million dollars to recreate and improve upon McConnell’s experiment, and has been able to generate promising results. Whoever finds the vault where we keep our memories is bound to go down in history!