<p>[Study</a> finds genetic link to violence, delinquency - Yahoo! News](<a href=“http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080714/hl_nm/delinquents_genes_dc]Study”>http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080714/hl_nm/delinquents_genes_dc)</p>
<p>Now that could get very explosive.</p>
<p>Well, I think it’s safe to say this will not be heard of again. I’m sure the thought police have already decided this is to be banned.</p>
<p>The trouble (well, one aspect of the trouble – not that there’s just one trouble with this) is that these genes have also been identified as candidate genes for depression. I’m sure we can all agree that criminal behavior and depression are both “bad” things we would rather not have to deal with, but they certainly aren’t the same, and it’s tough to rationalize such very different things being associated with the same genetic mutations.</p>
<p>At any rate, no matter what the lastest, sexiest behavioral genetics study says, biology isn’t destiny.</p>
<p>Especially a genetic study published in the The American Sociological Review.</p>
<p>The ASR is a very HIGH level journal. I would think they have enough science power to vet such an article.</p>
<p>believe nothing you read and only half of what you see…</p>
<p>A David Brooks column from the NYT takes a different tack (I’m often not on the same page with Brooks, but he sure makes sense to me here.)</p>
<p>
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/opinion/15brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/opinion/15brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin</a></p>
<p>The research isn’t on a new topic. Matt Ridley’s 1999 book “Genome” noted that “The criminal men have an unusual version of a gene on the X chromosome called the monoamine oxicase A gene (called MAOA in the sited article in this thread)…but this does not make this a ‘crime gene’, except in a very pedestrian sense. For a start, the mutation in question is now considered an ‘orphan’ mutation, so rare that very few criminals have this version of the gene. The monoaimine oxidase gene can explain very little about general criminal behavior.”</p>
<p>That said, criminal behavior does seem to have a strong <em>biological</em> nature to it. “Genome” also notes that studies of criminal behavior of adoptees in Denmark revealed a strong correlation with the criminal record of the biological parent and a very small correlation with the criminal record of the adopting parent - and even that vanished when controlled for peer-group effects (i.e. whether the neighborhood the person grew up in was a neighborhood with high crime or not).</p>
<p>Similarly, people’s likelihood of divorcing someday isn’t highly correlated to whether they were raised by divorced parents unless these parents were also their biological parents, and if the biological parents divorced but didn’t raise the child and the adopted child grew up with married parents, the divorce odds were correlated to the biological parents having divorced and not the parents who raised them having stayed together.</p>
<p>The book is a fascinating read. Cholesterol has been a hot topic for years, so I’ll share a little from pages 169-170 on that topic:</p>
<p>“In the so-called MrFit trial, in which 351,000 people from seven countries were followed for seven years, people with very low cholesterol and people with very high cholesterol proved twice as likely to die at a given age as people with medium cholesterol. The extra deaths among low-cholesterol people are mainly due to accident, suicide or murder. The 25% of men with the lowest cholesterol count are four times as likely to commit suicide as the 25% if men with the highest cholesterol - though no such problem holds with women.”</p>
<p>“low serotonin is an accurate predictor of aggressiveness in monkeys, just as it is an accurate predictor of impulsive murder, suicide, fighting or arson in human beings.”</p>
<p>“The higher your self-esteem and social rank relative to those around you, the higher your serotonin level.”</p>
<p>So I guess if you want to be less violent, you should frequent a board where your self-esteem and social rank will be high! ;)</p>
<p>So, what was your reaction to the article, Barrons? Do you believe behavior is largely genetically determined?</p>
<p>If criminal behavior turns out to truly be genetic then we will be morally obliged to stop punishing people for it. They had no choice in their actions. Their genes made them do it. </p>
<p>Punishing genetic criminals would be just as wrong as locking up someone for being tall, or blue-eyed, or having type A blood, or any other genetic trait. When something is genetic it takes free will out of the equation.</p>
<p>^LOL</p>
<p>Don’t we have another thread that deals with bogus science?</p>
<p>I learned about Jukes and Kalikaks in junior high school. So it’s old news. Used to be used to puff the posiition of the Edwards’.</p>
<p>I have always held a very conservative, tough on crime point of view. That was before my recent experience with John. John was adopted as an infant by good friends of ours. John’s birthmom already had 2 kids and didn’t want another one. Our S was born 2 weeks after John and we went to the same church until the boys were 6 or so, and the 2 families spent a lot of time together.</p>
<p>John was pretty much trouble from day 1. He was a difficult baby, a feisty toddler, and a violent preschooler. I remember working in the 5 year old Sunday School class and having to shelter the other children because John got mad and started throwing chairs. </p>
<p>John’s adoptive parents were a model couple: well educated, church going, and loving. They adopted an infant D 2 years later and she was and is fine.</p>
<p>As you can imagine, school was a nightmare. John was on ADHD meds in kindergarten and all through his school years there were different meds, different counselors, and different disciplinary techniques. They tried everything. He is actually pretty intelligent, so he was able to keep up in school even though he usually didn’t do all of his work.</p>
<p>During his high school years, his parents were frightened of him. Somewhere during that time he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in addition to the ADHD. Even with his angry and violent outbursts, he never hurt anyone. He was more into bashing walls and furniture. Finally one night in January, his sister got scared during one of his outbursts and called 911. The police came, took him to the county mental hospital where they held him for 4 hours and then decided he had calmed down and it was fine for him to leave (oh, brother).</p>
<p>My friends said he could not come back home to live. (He is 18, and was a senior, though he was mostly skipping school by this point.) After a week or two of him crashing with friends, they all sat down and talked and they told him they were going to put him in an apartment for 6 months and he was to get a job and they would help him transition to living on his own. 2 months later he was arrested for burglarizing some schools and a home with 2 other young men. Now he is in jail. S2 goes to visit him every week and says that John doesn’t really seem to understand that he is in jail because he did something wrong.</p>
<p>It appears he will be offered 5 years adjudication (probation) and will be released soon. So here is where I become a bleeding heart liberal. My sister is an experienced probation officer and I have talked to her about John. She says that there is no way a kid like him will complete his probation. It requires showing up to your scheduled meetings with your probation officer, holding down a job, paying fines and restitution (he’ll owe $5,000+), doing communty service, and passing random drug tests.</p>
<p>Knowing John for his whole life, I know that this kid never had a chance. He had the strong family and access to good medical and psychiatric care and he still couldn’t stay out of trouble. It’s kind of like putting a Down’s Syndrome kid in prison because they couldn’t pass their high school exit exams. If they can’t do it, they can’t do it. So what’s the solution? That doesn’t mean you can have people like John running around and terrorizing everyone. Still, it’s a shame that he will likely not make his probation and then be sent to prison for 2-5 years. And after that, who knows? My sister says that time and maturity actually do help some people to turn things around eventually.</p>
<p>Oh, and just as an aside…John will be on probation and have to get to appointments and will have to hold down a job, yet the county seized his car since it was used in the commission of a felony. It’s like they are setting him up for failure.</p>
<p>And one more aside regarding the original topic of the genetic nature of criminal behavior. A couple of years ago, there was a particularly brutal assault that happened in our city. One of the two young men who was convicted for the crime was a couple of years older than John and bore a striking resemblance to him when he was shown on t.v. during the trial. Makes you wonder.</p>
<p>Along the same lines, Bruce Perry’s new book “The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog” is a real eye-opener. His point is not so much about genetics, as about the long-term impacts of disruption of neurosequential development. The major point made is the same, though - without expensive (and rare) and continuing intervention, lots of kids simply never had a chance.</p>
<p>Ann Rule, a true crime writer, worked closely with Ted Bundy before his spree of killing women. She wrote a book about him, The Stranger Beside Me.</p>
<p>In it she said that being terrorized early in life, before age 3, seems to weigh in on how a person turns out. This happened to Ted Bundy.</p>
<p>Also, I read an article about serial killers. they all seemed to share 3 characteristics, and you had to have all 3. One is paranoid thinking, which I think is genetic. Another is brain damage. The third–the one with hope–is an abused childhood. Supposedly take away just one characteristic and the possibility of being a serial killer drops enormously. </p>
<p>I think some women should not be allowed to take their babies home from the hospital. The chance of abuse is too high. I know about civil liberties, but what about (1) the baby’s future and (2) risk to society? Perhaps at age 6, maybe school entry, a parent to have another chance to raise the child, but first, make sure the baby has a stable early childhood, and yank the kid back should there be any suspicion of abuse.</p>
<p>I’m thinking of the child first, and society second, when I offer this point of view.</p>
<p>With respect to the man who posted about John: with all his misbehavior, notice John never hurt anyone. There was no abused childhood. That is why, I’ll bet.</p>
<p>The story of John is heartbreaking. I wonder, too, rather than assuming genetics, if in utero exposure to drugs, alcohol, and/or nutritional deprivation might not be a likely cause. A lot of the behavior described sounds like fetal alcohol syndrome, or something similar.</p>
<p>garland, yes, you are right that those things could be the cause. John doesn’t have the physical features often associated with fetal alcohol syndrome, but I doubt all kids with FAS have that. And drugs certainly could be a possibility.</p>
<p>Interestingly, this birth mom claimed no substance abuse. However, the girl that this same couple adopted had a birthmom who said she had previously used cocaine but did not use it during pregnancy. So they knew there was the possibility that she had, in fact, used it and were prepared for that with their adopted D. But the little girl is now 16 and is perfectly fine (except that she thinks her mother is completely stupid and rolls her eyes all the time…in other words, a normal teenager).</p>
<p>“Largely” is a big word. But even if it’s only 25% or 50% of the equation, that is pretty significant. The question becomes what do you do with the information. I don’t think it would absolve anyone of criminal activity. I think the Ted Bundy type killers are cut from a different mold all together. But maybe they can do the testing on some of his remains or samples he had to give.</p>
<p>" I wonder, too, rather than assuming genetics, if in utero exposure to drugs, alcohol, and/or nutritional deprivation might not be a likely cause."</p>
<p>One thing we have found out for certain is that the “crack baby” thing was a hoax. Researchers have followed children born to cocaine-using mothers and found, after correcting for income/family situation, no statistical differences between them (in school performance, ADHD, juvenile crime, etc.) and babies born to non-using mothers. HOWEVER, the same is not true for alcohol.</p>
<p>The results are not as sanguine as Mini reports.</p>
<p>[Prenatal</a> cocaine’s lasting cellular effects ( Although the crack baby hysteria of t…)](<a href=“http://www.bio-medicine.org/biology-news/Prenatal-cocaines-lasting-cellular-effects-4859-1/]Prenatal”>http://www.bio-medicine.org/biology-news/Prenatal-cocaines-lasting-cellular-effects-4859-1/)</p>