Advances in medical technology, such as pills to improve memory, could exacerbate the economic and social divide between rich and poor, a leading thinktank has warned.
Drugs being developed to combat memory loss in dementia patients could be parlayed by pushy middle class parents in a bid to improve their children's exam performance, according to the centre-left thinktank Demos.
This would increase the gap in educational attainment between affluent and impoverished pupils and require a new drugs policy in schools, it said.
The thinktank said research from the US showed growing numbers of high school students using stimulants to improve their concentration and alertness. Drugs such as Ritalin were either obtained illegally or on prescription to tackle conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
The report, Better Humans?, said school drug testing policies, aimed at preventing the use of drugs such as cannabis and ecstasy, which can impair educational achievement, would need to be changed.
It said: "Whereas recreational drugs tend to be taken without the support of parents and teachers, we face the prospect of enhancement drugs being actively 'pushed' to under-performing students by teachers or parents."
One of the report's editors, Paul Miller, said: "When half the class can pop a pill to enhance their learning, what does that mean for the exam system? What does it mean for the way we deal with cheating? Technologies of this kind demand a rethink in social and educational policy."
The thinktank recommended that the government set up a schools and university anti-doping agency to "promote a drugs-free education system".
The report also warned that the transhumanist movement, which espouses human enhancement through medical technology and nanotechnology, was dismissive of social concerns, such as how these developments would affect people with disabilities.
It said the development of "designer babies", where parents could screen their offspring for the presence of genetic conditions, and cochlear implants for hearing impairment, could lead to people with disabilities becoming more marginalised in society.
The report said that since transhumanist thinking held that it was "a parental responsibility to use genetic screening and therapeutic enhancement to ensure as 'healthy' a child as possible", parents who refused to give their child cochlear implants could be considered guilty of child abuse.
Ultimately, the poor could become classified as disabled because they could not afford human enhancement.
The thinktank also raised concern about efforts to prolong the standard human lifespan to 100 or more, noting it could lead to a retirement age of 80 or 90 becoming necessary to pay for pensions.
Extended human lifespan and a higher retirement age could also lead to some vital professions, such as firefighting, becoming less popular.
Mr Miller said: "If people are living longer and have to work for longer, then they will be more inclined to do jobs with lower risk of accidents."
