Advanced neuroimaging techniques are probing more deeply than ever before into the physical basis of moral reasoning, even into the neural structures subserving conscience. Neurochemical models of ethical cognition may soon lead to the development of “consciolytic” drugs that could temporarily anesthetize the neural components which form moral conscience. These components include the emotional response to tragedy and the laying down and retrieval of memories encoding events of moral significance. Subjective awareness of conscience is by nature dysphoric. Just as analgesics are useful in numbing unpleasant sensations we call pain, consciolytic drugs would numb unpleasant moral emotions which add to human suffering. Consciolytic drugs might have beneficial applications in preventing the terrible recurrent memories of post-traumatic stress disorder in witnesses of horror or victims of violence. Yet might the use of such drugs also dull appropriate moral reactions and desensitize users to injustice? Would the ability to numb the conscience on demand so sever decision from judgment that the medicated might feel free to act impulsively or maliciously without regard to moral responsibility? Furthermore, if society’s understanding of conscience were to become medicalized, so that conflicts of conscience were deemed treatable with drugs, how would we come to value the conscience of the physician who, say, opposed the use of consciolytic drugs? To obligate that physician to write the prescription would be to surrender the consciences of both physician and patient. If it is unwise to seek to reduce suffering by weakening the conscience, then what would it mean to enhance the conscience, and could this be done through drugs? The unreasonableness of reducing the conscience to an exchange of chemicals in a few neurons suggests a purpose to conscience beyond material self-interest.