Three genes may play a strong role in determining why some young men raised in rough neighborhoods or deprived families become violent criminals, while others do not, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.
[…]
They found specific variations in three genes — the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) gene, the dopamine transporter 1 (DAT1) gene and the dopamine D2 receptor (DRD2) gene — were associated with bad behavior, but only when the boys suffered some other stress, such as family issues, low popularity and failing school.
MAOA regulates several message-carrying chemicals called neurotransmitters that are important in aggression, emotion and cognition such as serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine.
The links were very specific.
The effect of repeating a grade depended on whether a boy had a certain mutation in MAOA called a 2 repeat, they found.
And a certain mutation in DRD2 seemed to set off a young man if he did not have regular meals with his family.
“But if people with the same gene have a parent who has regular meals with them, then the risk is gone,” Guo said.
“Having a family meal is probably a proxy for parental involvement,” he added. “It suggests that parenting is very important.”
Is this news? That both genes and the environment plays a role?
What does this have to do with social conservatism?
While my family wasn’t exactly the “Cleavers”, I can see in hindsight that some family time, usually supper, did make some positive differences in my life.
I can see right now some social engineers trying to use this for a case for national daycare, i.e. the “daycare family” will be an ideal substitute for parents too busy to bond with their kids. Using taxdollars of course.
Mealtime is the one time we gather together.
A prayer of thanks makes it special, too.
No sh*t. I hope they got a lot of money to do this. What is common sense is now proven by science.
What, the tabula ain’t as rasa as the PoMo sociology crowd would like you to think? Maybe there’s some nature reacting to all that nurture? Possibly everything -isn’t- a narrative?
But Kate but Kate, that would mean that some cultures are more [gasp, swoon!] FUNCTIONAL than others! More, dare I say it, valid?
This cannot BE!!!!
I call “Shenanigans.” Ladies and Gentlemen, I present the first steps in attempting to add habitual criminals to the Social Security teat.
______________________
“You’re under arrest, son.”
“Nuh uh.”
“Shut it…hands up.”
“Got a MAOA two-peter.”
“FREEZE!!!! ON THE GROUND!!!…WHERE’S THE WEAPON, SON??!?!?!”
“Huh?”
“THE TWO-PETER…WHERE IS IT?!?!”
“Oh…MAOA two-peter…it’s a mutation in my monoamine oxidase A.”
(silence)
“Officer?”
“You one of those girlie boys, son?”
“Huh?”
What drives these studies? Is it the same as the race to find the gene studies: to absolve people of personal responsibility, whether to others or simply themselves?
“It suggests that parenting is very important.”
No shit Sherlock.
JR
You stole my thunder.
We are looking at the next group to be added to the list of historically disadvantaged ppl.
If you can’t beat’em…
I’d say to file this under the department of redundancies department, but leftards need to be told the obvious. Repeatedly.
Even then it rarely sinks in.
Actually, from an adaptive viewpoint, it suggests that violence and aggression in males raised in times of disruption, strife and upheaval (i.e., when parents and extended family may be dead or unable to cope)has been favoured by the evolutionary process. Two orphans on the savannah. Which one do you think will make it without Ma and Pa? Bookish Billy or Psycho Sammy?
Wow, so a Black Kid living in the Ghetto ain’t got a chance, eh ?
Is this what the Report is really after, justification for the criminals crimes ?
You guys, kind of missing the point here. This isn’t about justifying some kind of nanny-state interventionism.
Historically, kids with stable families who give a crap about them do better than those without, regardless of income. We know this statistically and anecdotally, which is why we know single parent families are less good than two-parent as well. Mum or Dad can’t do what Mom-and-Dad can do. Extended family is even better. This is what we know.
We also know that some kids can survive pretty much anything and grow up to be normal, but some can’t.
Why is it that way?
Knowing -why- is very important, to my way of thinking. So this genetic predisposition hypothesis has the potential to be a very powerful thing. If its true, of course. They could be wrong.
However the effort to find out is quite interesting, at the very least. Better than training capuchin monkeys to simulate capitalism, eh?
This is even better than the HRC’s. You just take a gene tyest & if you come up with anything they THINK is a criminal or other bad traits you may inherit. Than our noble society can abort them early, or just throww them in jail when of age or before, because there genetic crimminals waiting too happen. Shades of Gattica. More speculation by the genetics are destiny folks.
Careful, careful. There is no direct link between x-gene and y-behaviour. But, x-gene may require stimulation in order to function in y-manner. Or in z-manner.
The stimulation is what’s interesting. Is it a family meal– which might lower stress and enable neurological connections..or..a family meal which might increase stress and disable neurological connections.
Is it the provision of a regular, predictable envt versus an unstable unpredictable envt (ignoring family meals).
Is it a feeling of security vs insecurity..and so on.
The culture of victimization strikes again.
“It’s not my fault. See, I got these genes that made me do it.”
I call bullshit on this whole thing.
In school the yardstick was my guide, at home it was the wooden spoon.
In these days of metersticks and blenders the problem is obvious. Teachers and Parents no longer have the correct tools to “counsel” misbehaving youth.
First Kate name checks IQ And The Wealth Of Nations, now this? Awesome. In honour of this genetic determinism twofer I’m gonna…I’ll think of something.
Did you know that only 2.8% of Americans with postgraduate degrees believe in genetic determinism? And that belief in genetic determinism is *negatively* correlated with level of education attained? Now you do. Canadian and American public policy is entirely based on blank slate voodoo rather than genetic determinism – at an enormous cost to society.
Ha..Kate contradicts herself in back to back posts. Here she posts an article that argues the importance of parents in the shaping of children, but then in her next posts argues that a kid who was raised by a terrorist should have somehow seen the world like her and identified the wrongful nature of his circumstance. Hilarious.
Interesting interpretation steve.
I would interpret that to mean the Khadr family did not enjoy cozy mealtimes together and produced a kid whose had the genetic propensity to be a terrorist.
Bingo, bango.
A genetic propensity to being a terrorist?! Come on, the kid was there because of the environment he was raised in. His family messed him up, not some sort of gene in his brain. Asking a young teenager to understand the right and wrongs of geopolitics is just ridiculous. Whether he threw the grenade, made bombs, etc. is irrelevant. The point is that he did what he did because he was taught all his life that it was the right thing to do. I don’t know how anyone can expect someone raised under those conditions to view the world any differently.
All this aside, we’re apparently in that part of the world to protect our allegedly superior values (e.g. right to a fair trial), but then we hypocritically toss them out the window as its convenient.
This shouldn’t be a wedge issue between the left and the right. Giving this kid a fair trial is something that should resonate with varying respective of where you stand politically.
note: the last bit should read, “varying interests respective…”
Interesting perspective, steve. You belong to the ‘bucket’ theory of the mind, ie, that it’s an empty bucket which operates only with what is tossed into it.
How would you then be justified in trying anyone for any action? How would anyone be accountable for their actions? After all, since the individual is, in your bucket theory, merely an aggregate of what’s been tossed in the bucket by others, then, he’s not responsible for what’s in that mind, is he?
You are ignoring that each and every individual has to capacity-to-reason. And this capacity overrides any stuff that’s flung into the bucket. This capacity to think means that we can actually change our minds. We can innovate. We can invent.
After all – at one time, we’d never heard of the computer. Did its inventor think it up by himself, or did he have to wait until someone flung the idea into his mind?
Our capacity to reason means that we are, as adults, responsible for our own actions. That means that we are considered capable of thinking through these actions on our own, and being held accountable for them. Khadr was most certainly raised in a terrorist family, but, he chose to follow that path and we hold him responsible for his choice of murdering other people.
With your perspective – no-one is responsible for anything! We’re just a collection of things others fling into our empty bucket-minds!
And you’re ignoring his age. I think people behave within the norms they’ve been given. If you’re taught from day one that westerners are the enemy, bad people, etc, you’re going to believe it… nor did he have a conscious choice or a point in his life that was able to either accept or reject that logic. By reason, you’re suggesting there is some objective truth that should have lead him to the idea that the allied forces in Afghanistan are “good”. That belief isn’t something that is instinctively within us. To come to that understanding, it has to be based on your knowledge of the geopolitical issues going on there and who’s teaching them to you, much of which is beyond the mind of a young boy. Just as an allied soldier feels he is doing right by killing terrorists, this kid felt he was doing right. When he through that grenade he had just been shot twice and bombed by an A-10. I don’t think any of us can put ourselves in that moment, but if that had just happened to me, the last thing I would expect is that the Americans were coming to help me. He didn’t have the chance or life experience to begin to reason why he was there. Say what you will about adult terrorists. I’ll give you that you can apply more culpability to their ways, but kids and young teenagers are extremely impressionable. Do you expect that he should have had this epiphany as a 13 year old and said “hey, my family is crazy. I’m going to disown them, by walking down to a police station so I can report them all”? It’s just not going to happen under these circumstances in 99/100 cases.
Beyond that, you’re ignoring that there’s no reason not to grant him a fair trial. What would be the problem in that? If a quick and speedy trial is good enough for Paul Bernardo, surely a young brainwashed kid deserves the same.
The reason you and I believe what we do is conditioning and our relatively balanced upbringings. I don’t know about your parents, but mine encouraged me to think for myself. I’m going to guess that Omar’s life wasn’t so much like that.
Someone made a suggestion earlier today that because the crime was committed in Afghanistan, Khadr’s trail should be held there.
Ship him over there and let the Afghan “justice” system deal with him.End of story, no more grenade tossing!
Steve said: “Beyond that, you’re ignoring that there’s no reason not to grant him a fair trial. What would be the problem in that? If a quick and speedy trial is good enough for Paul Bernardo, surely a young brainwashed kid deserves the same.”
Steve, dude. He’s had a trial. Had his own lawyer and everything.
It was a -military- trial, because he was captured on a battlefield after killing a soldier under a false truce. He’s not a lawful combatant fighting in uniform, so he’s actually received -more- formal justice (and much more careful treatment) than he’s entitled to expect under the Geneva Convention or under Canadian law, or under American law for that matter.
What you are arguing is that he hasn’t had the same formal trial as an America citizen arrested on American soil would get. He’s not entitled to that. If fact he -can’t be- entitled to it, he’s not an American for crap sakes.
Its a foreign war, not a friggin’ armed robbery in Detroit.