I wonder what the study said about potential side effects of these 'treatments', both short and long term. Sleep is a vital human physiological function, and tampering with it brings costs. In theory it would be nice to have a pill that you could pop that would simply allow you to "stay awake" 20 hours a day and function like a refreshed, rested, person. But AFAIK every "wakeup" pill/method we've been able to find is a short-term remedy that can actually worsen long-term effects. Caffeine is a well known stimulant, and it can help keep you alert. So can methamphetamine. But even if you don't feel tired and can perform, your sleep debt keeps growing and when the crash comes it comes all the worse. Cafeine to stay awake is like cafeine for a drunk -- it makes them a more alert drunk, it also makes you a more alert but still sleep deprived (with growing sleep debt) person. I can't help but wonder what kind of long term effects might grow out of such tampering (oops, should have said "engineering) of such a complicated and not understood mechanism like the human brain.

But not to worry. Pretty soon we'll have machines to do all the fighting, and we'll be able to sleep late.

On my last ship while I was in the Navy I ran, regularly, 20 hour days. This was primarily due to a lack of qualified personnel onboard (we'd lost a few for various admin reason), and we were placed on a program where we were given supplements to assist our schedule. When I left the boat, I was diagnosed with acute clinical depression, anxiety disorder and had panic attacks on a regular basis. Even now, several years later I still have them, something I never had prior to being put on sleep deprivation. The depression is gone, thanks mainly to some serious counseling, but many of the other side effects are still here.

Although I am against the present and many previous wars, thank you, StirCrazy, for your service, and shame on us for making you shoulder more personal cost than you should have to. I hope the other side effects are and will continue to be improving, and I hope our government has done right by you in helping with this.

I had the same question as above regarding side effects, and I'm pretty disappointed that it wasn't really explored at all by Saletan. From the sounds of your story, the side effects could be pretty onerous, and in any case, Slate's bio-beat reporter certainly should know that one of the basic tenets of modern biology is that enhancing one trait will almost always come at the cost of another. That should've been a major focus of this story, imho.

All the best - HopefulCynic