OK. So it looks like he’s human after all. Like Barry Bonds, Marion Jones, and, possibly, human like you, or someone who is working for you or someone you manage. Large numbers of people — for example, surveys estimate between 7 and 25 percent of college students — use some sort of cognitive-enhancing drug in an attempt to improve performance.

Which brings us back to whether you want to be like Lance — or Barry or Marion. The growing use of the currently available cognitive-enhancing drugs — Adderall, Ritalin, and Provigil, as well as, for example, the routine use of beta-blockers for public speaking and the soon to be appearing memory-enhancing drugs developed to treat Alzheimer’s Disease – means you now face the Lance question in your business, professional, or academic life: Do you need/want to use use performance enhancing drugs in life (not sports!) to help stay competitive while trying to achieve what you want to achieve? claims the Lance Armstrong revelations (confirmations?) “ may change the history of sports ,” the scope of the story’s influence is far grander than such a sports-specific assessment.

If you’re interested in the socio-cultural implications of cognitive-enhancing drugs a good place to start is Anjan Chatterjee’s by now classic 2004 article  Cosmetic neurology: The controversy over enhancing movement, mentation, and mood followed by the 2008 piece in Nature by Henry Greely and colleagues titled  Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy .