Antianxiety medications can be enormously helpful to people bedeviled by severe anxiety — no doubt about that. But by tamping down anxious feelings, could it be that these so-called “anxiolytic” drugs are blunting our empathy and rendering us less willing to lend a helping hand to those in need?
That’s the word from the scientists responsible for a provocative new study showing that lab rats given a drug called midazolam (MDZ) were less willing than untreated control rats to help release a trapped cage mate.
