Drugs could keep elderly working for longer

As long as the therapies are found not to have any unwelcome sideeffects, they could play a valuable role by allowing people to remain in work for longer as the workforce ages, it said.

Introducing the report Prof Barbara Sahakian, of Cambridge University, said: "This might be of particular use for the older workforce because we know that we don't function cognitively at age 55 or 60 as we functioned in our 20s.

"People having to work longer may find that they are not able to keep up with their younger colleagues, so this may be a way to boost cognition and performance for those people."

There are concerns, however, that any drugs which begin to be adopted by healthy people would have to be tightly regulated to prevent wealthier or healthier people gaining an unfair advantage.

Ethicists believe that as "human enhancement" becomes commonplace, there is a risk people could be pressured into using the technology for fear of falling behind colleagues.

This could equally apply to mechanical limbs, or hi-tech hearing and sight aids which are expected to become more widely used but could unfairly advantage certain people at the expense of others if not tightly regulated.

Ethicist Professor Jackie Leach Scully, from the University of Newcastle said: "We've got very little idea of how these technologies will pan out.

"What may be special about enhancement in the context of work is the intrinsically highly competitive nature of the modern world of work, which raises the risk that employees will be under significant pressure to use enhancement of some type.

"People may have many reasons why they don't want to do that. They may be concerned about safety, they may be concerned about becoming dependent on something they may have cultural or religious objections over. In the context of highly pressurised work environment, how free is the choice not to adopt such technology going to be?"

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Drugs could keep elderly working for longer