Newsman Mike Wallace Declares Depression is a "Medical Disease"

I saw a short infomercial on primetime CBS in which Mike Wallace tells the public depression is a "medical disease." What? Only in the rarest cases (e.g., condition of the thyroid gland in which thyroxine is deficient) has a biological etiology been established for symptoms of depression. Getting treated for clinical depression is one thing, but if depressive episodes were caused by a biological pathogen--the popular misnomer of a "chemical imbalance"-- meta-analyses done on talk therapy vs drugs (there have been several) would have shown that the effectiveness of talk therapy is zero, which is not the case. From the same studies, if depression was simply a "medical disease" then combining the two treatment modes would not be more effective than one or the other. Aside from any inherent flaws of the sacred meta-analysis itself (e.g., quality of the metadata), the DSM-IV still lists this condition as a psychological disorder--a matter of abnormal behavior and not a "medical disease." Moreover, despite FDA approval of anti-depressants for demonstrating more efficacy than placebo, there are still indicaters that anti-depressants may work with some people only because of the placebo effect (see here: http://psycnet.apa.org/?fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/1522-3736.1.1.12a ).

In truth, the real "medical disease" can be caused by the drug treatments used for depression. The "chemical imbalance" actually occurs when people take anti-depressants (e.g., serotonin remains in the synapse of neuron connections rather than re-uptaking). There is increasing evidence that upon stopping anti-depressants withdrawal symptoms are common. People who take several anti-depressants at the same time are at risk for a potentially lethal type of toxicity lightly labeled "serotonin syndrome." Drug treatments can lead to Parkinsonism, cognitive dysfunction, suicidality, weight gain, nervousness, agitation, and insomnia (all considered to be mere side effects by most professionals).

I'm always sorry to hear that anyone including Mike Wallace has suffered through clinical depression. He tells the public, "It [treatment likely in the form of an anti-depressant] worked for me," but it's particularly bad science to generalize from one case. However, It is yet another example of how biodeterminism is being spread in our culture. Do you think he's a paid spokesperson for the pharmaceutical industry?


If you want more references:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200504/s1338168.htm

Very good article here: http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:LqzUHKw87HEJ:psychrights.org/Articles/LacasseonDTCAinEHPP.pdf+%22talk+therapy%22+%22just+as+effective%22+drug&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=us

Politicus Biodeterminus: The Absurdity of a "Conservative" Brain

On the eve of the sixth anniversary of 9/11 comes a new kind of political disaster--one of the most troubling examples of an already troubled nation's obsession with biodeterminism I have ever seen.

A study picked up by the American media (see below for reference) claims to have evidence that the brains of liberals and conservatives are "hardwired" differently when it comes to conflict monitoring and resolution. The news article title itself ("Homo politicus: brain function of liberal, conservatives differs") is immediately guilty of overgeneralizing because "brain function" is particularly vague and sounds all-inclusive.

What do researchers deem an adequate analog that has external validity outside the scope of the study applicable to the political issues harshly debated between liberals and conservatives?--no more than how much brain activity occurs in one small area of the brain when met with a task that challenges an established routine (in the current research, a task involved pressing a key when seeing an M appear on a computer monitor but not pressing the key if a W apppeared. There was one condition in which the M appeared 4 times more frequently than the W and in another condition the W appeared 4 times more frequently, which set up a routine and controlled for what effect the specific letters might be having on the task. As a group, the participants who identified themselves as liberals made fewer errors and had more brain activity in the region of the anterior cingulate cortex). The researchers then infer that such a circumstance in the lab has the same effect on your brain's mechanism for basic conflict resolution, such as having to change the way you would routinely drive home when you're met with road construction. In the end, the same brain mechanism is presumably so important for something like your ability to resolve the larger abstract and real world conflicts that are a part of a political orientation that it warrants media exposure of the results.

According to the results, it was "unmistakable" that the group identifying themselves as liberals showed greater neural activity according to electroencephalographs in a region of the brain thought to be associated with conflict monitoring when they had to break a routine, which can then be inferred to the whole population of liberals (bad science), and this explains why (i.e., the underlying cause) they resolve conflicts differently than conservatives?

What is much more unmistakable is that research of this type is consciously designed to try making a correlation between physiology and a characteristic such as political orientation a unidirectional cause and effect relationship. The biodeterministic chain of events goes like this: Genes cause the development of conflict monitoring mechanisms in your brain (which itself is not well established) and then this biological component is why you prefer a liberal or conservative type of conflict resolution (whatever that could possibly be in the real world). Let's not leave out the part of the causal chain in which the media gets a hold of this type of research and throws an already biased analysis so far out of whack that people begin wondering whose brain structure is "better" for conflict resolution--the stubborn and rigid conservative or the wishy-washy liberal--when brain structure is not the all important causal determinant for a person to adopt one political orientation over another. The public has already been told in so many ways it's "better" to be stubborn and rigid than wishy-washy.

Not even half of the people who went to the Internet on their Monday morning to see this article sitting there waiting to be read have the capacity to see the reductionistic interpretation of human behavior being presented. Moreover, it would never cross their minds that you can't simply seperate a political agenda from "scientific" research claiming you have "scientific" evidence that is simply the factual truth (i.e., the researchers chose to add to the body of research that keeps telling us how automatic behavior is).

If you do happen to have the capacity to understand science more than most people, keep in mind the following:

1. The study imposed order by forcing people to report their political orientation as one thing or the other- conservative or liberal. (There's no mention of moderates, independents, or any other political labels.)

2. Skeptics might also want to consider that nobody is demonstrating how first you develop a particular type of conflict resolution dependant on a brain mechanism and then you become either a liberal or a conservative, which would be crucial to actually demonstrate that physiology has the kind of power that some assume predetermines even your political orientation.

3. Unless everyone in each group performed exactly the same (highly unlikely), we have no way of knowing about any overlap in the two groups (i.e., was the brain activity of some conservatives less than what was observed with liberals and vice versa). We can only assume any overlap was not enough to prevent a statistically significant difference between the two groups.

4. To suggest that the evidence obtained by researchers in this study is relevant to "hardwiring" of the brain confounds how a person uses his or her brain with the actual physiological structure. The physiological structure of the brain is not automatically revealed by the way someone demonstrates thinking or behavior. In other words, two people can have the same basic brain physiology and still not USE their brains the same way based on many different factors. It's a trend toward biodeterminism that many scientists make this leap of faith.

I absolutely cannot believe that before the data is even gathered these researchers design studies specifically to support that activity of merely one region of the brain (in this case, the anterior cingulate cortex) is indicative of a person's conflict regulation (but may only be one small part of a complex system), that they authoritatively say "the neural mechanisms for conflict monitoring are formed early in childhood" (as if later education has no influence on decision making), that they measure the electrical activity of one small region of the brain and eventually (when they find only a correlation between whose brain showed more activity and what they indicated as political orientation) conclude that "genes provide the BLUEPRINT [my emphasis] for more liberal or conservative orientations." Then, just to be on the safe side to not make their preplanned agenda so obvious and not give away that we're heading back to the reductionistic age of the eugenics movement, they sneak in a sentence or a phrase like "but ...they [genes] are shaped substantially by one's environment over the course of development." Substantially enough to stop adding to the body of research that fosters biodeterminism?

Can't you see eugenicists of the future, armed with the data from the human genome project, trying to figure out how to breed out of the American population a "liberal" style of conflict resolution (again, whatever that could possibly be in the real world)? More people have got to see this is scientific thinking gone awry.

Your brain structure is a PHYSIOLOGICAL CORRELATE in relation to your behavior, and any state one region of your brain is in when you resolve a conflict is a PHYSIOLOGICAL CORRELATE and not necessarily the cause of how you resolve a conflict. There is a physiologically correlated state at ANY given time to your behavior. If there is anything that is rigid and stubborn in our society it is the conceptualization of human behavior as mechanistically bound to the result of research studies trying to show how physiology causes people to act a certain way. To conclude that your physiological state or genetic structure is bound by the underlying "blueprint" that has presumably predesigned (i.e., the cause of) your behavior when there are actually a multitude of factors both known and unknown that in some way influence something as complex as political orientation, your intelligence, how you resolve a conflict, and (most importantly) your development as a whole person is further evidence of the sheer biodeterminism that is ruining the field of psychology and our understanding of human behavior.

Read the article yourself by journalist, Marlowe Hood, "Homo politicus: brain function of liberals, conservatives differs" available here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/scienceneuroscience

Edit: The above article was pulled from the U.S. Yahoo news (not suprisingly). You can see Google here: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5isgJ0r_9nH41VBhtXvN17pxlA31Q

also available here is another journalist's take on the research but is similarly supporting biodetermism: http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-politics10sep10,0,5982337.story?coll=la-home-center

Of Mice and Memory But Still Biodetermism

Let's assume there is solid research that shows after mice exercise we find more blood flow to a region of their brain called the "dentate gyrus," which is also the name given to a similar region of the human brain associated with what's been called age-related memory loss that can start as early as middle age. The scientific study on mice has two groups: Group A exercises and Group B does not exercise. All other extraneous variables are kept consistent among the two groups of mice (such as food, living conditions, exposure to light and ability to sleep, etc.) so that we can confidently conclude the factors we are isolating are exercize (the independent variable) and brain cell growth (the dependant variable). Let's also assume we do a brain cell count and it turns out the group of mice that exercised had more brain cells compared to the other group. We conclude exercise must play some important role in developing "brainpower" for memory and learning.

Next, researchers move to the human cohort because they really care more about how learning and memory works with humans. They do a related study in which two groups of human subjects either exercise or don't exercise, but since we can't sample their brain tissue for a neuron count (still presently considered unethical thank God) we rely on our technology for indirect evidence of brain stimulation. Magnetic resonance imagery (MRI) reveals the part of the human brain we also call the "dentate gyrus" to be receiving more blood flow in the group that exercised compared to the group that did not, and this is right in line with our mice study. Time to hit the press and publish our study, and that's exactly what the National Academy of Sciences did. The public was informed here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070312/sc_nm/exercise_memory_dc
and here: http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN1237468620070312

Both articles are entitled "Study Shows Why Exercise Boosts Brainpower." Curiously, no name of the journalist(s) is given.

A Case of Biodeterminism

Right from the onset of this article the journalist proclaims "Exercise boosts brainpower," which I would agree with to some degree, only HOW does this occur according to our biodeterministic writer?-- "by building new brain cells in a brain region linked with memory and memory loss." This statement assumes memory for humans is a simple matter of how many brain cells you have, which is utter nonsense. Memory is just as much a matter of how to retrieve the information as it is whether there are enough neurons in the brain to store it. Apparently, even the researchers optimistically conclude: "Our next step is to identify the exercise regimen that is most beneficial to improve cognition and reduce normal memory loss, so that physicians may be able to prescribe specific types of exercise to improve memory." Unbelievable.

Problem 1: Exercise increases blood flow to just about ALL regions of the body, not just the "dentate gyrus" in the brain. Increased blood flow to a region of the brain means this region is being used more than other regions, but the rest of the brain is still working in addition to the dentate gyrus.

Problem 2: No direct evidence of brain cell growth. Increased blood flow to any region of the brain does not necessarily mean more brain cell growth. You can't count brain cells using an MRI. However, the journalist writes, "They of course could not dissect the brains of people to see if new neurons grew, but they could use MRI to have a peek," which is pretty close to a lie misleading the public about what our magnetic imaging tests can and cannot do.

Problem 3: Although it may be tempting to do so because of the behavior of some people contributing to a "rat race" among humans, overgeneralizing from the cognition of mice to the cognition of human beings is generally very bad science.

Problem 4: The assumption that more brain cells = "smarter." You might as well assume a person who eats is smarter because you need food and the energy it provides to create new brain cells. Since when does the number of brain cells a person has indicate how well his or her memory works? There would obviously be a threshold at which not having enough brain cells impairs memory, but its not the typical case scenario as is being reported by this study and as evidenced by the participants who had no obvious brain impairment. What do the researchers actually find? According to the article, "Exercise generated blood flow to the dentate gyrus of the people, and the more fit a person got, the more blood flow the MRI detected." There's no brain cell counts and no memory or learning tests being given that shows one group outperforms the other. We are still in the region of pure biology here. As absurd as it may sound, nobody even tested the mice to see if after the exercise they became smarter in any way. Don't ask me what valid test of cognition you can give to a mouse, especially if you think it can be generalized to human cognition.

In case you can't see it, here's a hint of the underlying biodeterminism within the article typical of our culture: The assumption that the will to learn plays no role in learning for humans. Just think of the joy it would bring to Americans to be told all you need to do is exercize and you'll get "smarter." You can prevent age-related memory loss by exercising because your dentate gyrus will receive more blood flow than if you didn't exercise. Hurray.

Here's the blatant biodeterminism: What does the journalist want us to believe?--a new breakthrough in our science of cognitive psychology as it pertains to some relationship between brain cell growth, exercise, and learning. There is no real breakthrough.

Reality: What do we actually now know about human beings as it pertains to this study?--very little if anything at all, except of course a predictably growing trend toward biodetermism. Biodeterminists want learning and memory in humans to be that predictable and that automatic, and capitalists are ready to follow. I can't wait to see the TV commercials for the new drug Gyrutus that stimulates the dentate gyrus region of the brain giving you more brainpower to compete with the the other rats of the rat race. Side effects include making the pharmaceutical industry very wealthy. This is where our concept of learning is headed. Poor memory? Have you had your dentate gyrus examined?

Don't get me wrong. Exercise is important for many health-related reasons. But when it comes to the need for exercise to stimulate blood flow to the dentate gyrus? Don't get me started. It is getting increasingly more difficult in our society to understand human learning, memory, and behavior is not just a function of the brain. If this doesn't make sense to you, perhaps you need to understand how our culture of biodeterminism is reducing just about everything down to biological constituents.

Help stop biodeterminism by learning what it is! Read about it here: http://biodeterminism.blogspot.com/2006/05/what-is-biodeterminism.html

What Does Anorexia and the News Media Have In Common?

I saw a Reuters news article posted on Yahoo! about Brazillian supermodel Giselle telling the press she's thankful for not having the kind of family that might have caused her to develop anorexia nervosa, like one model in Brazil who died because of it. Here's a link for the article:

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=peopleNews&storyID=2007-01-19T182646Z_01_N19327224_RTRIDST_0_PEOPLE-BRAZIL-MODELS-GISELE-DC.XML

Wouldn't you know it! A few days later, another Reuters article was released trying to make sure the public doesn't start to believe parenting can contribute to developing anorexia, only this article was much worse than what Giselle had to say because it was written (unfortunately by a woman) to perpetuate biodeterminism. Here's the link for her article:

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=healthNews&storyID=2007-01-25T225206Z_01_TON579056_RTRUKOC_0_US-ANOREXIA.xml&WTmodLoc=HealthNewsHome_C2_healthNews-2

I know we'd all like the "scientific evidence" that journalists can be unbiased in their reports, but yes, once again, here's another article contributing to a biodeterministic understanding of human behavior with only a mere hint of what has been called the "stress-diathesis" model of mental illness (i.e., genes are only expressed under certain environmental conditions, which means the genes are not the only cause). The reporter at Reuters masquerading as an expert in psychological research trying to tell the public what causes human behavior claims there is "NO scientific evidence" to support that families are the cause of anorexia. She interviews a doctor whose research apparently found greater concordant rates in monozygotic (identical) twins compared to dizygotic (fraternal) twins, and now they're both ready to proclaim anorexia is being caused by genes.

So, parents who place their children into beauty pagents when they're as young as 5 years old don't instill into their children an inflated importance of appearances? Teen magazines and our society do nothing? Cultural expecations? --nada? The development of a schema somehow happens in the absence of a person's experience and just grows in the brain from a genetic source?

I hate it when I have to refer back to my textbooks from college because they're buried under some very heavy boxes in my closet. In one of the boxes I found a book that I knew discussed some of the research done on factors suspected of contributing to anorexia. A good book called Sex & Gender (Lips 1997) was written by a woman well aquanted with what a cultural-aware perspective on human behavior really means (in case you feel a book from 1997 is "outdated" or not).

Lips explains the most common cases of anorexia are with white, middle-class women under the age of 25, especially if modeling students, athletes, or dancers. About 30 years or so ago, a change began to occur pertaining to the cultural convention in America for what an attractive woman should look like, and this newfangled woman was much thinner compared to body types of earlier generations (due to everything from Barbie dolls to Playboy). In contrast to men, a woman's appearance is generally more subjected to expectations of the conventional ideal, and overweight women are perhaps given more severe condemnations than overweight men. There is a horrible stereotype that obese people are less smart, lonely, and otherwise undesireable, while the stereotype for slim attractive women is just about the opposite. Moreover, the conventional ideal for men is a much heavier, muscular type body. A woman is more expected to be "watching her figure" by dieting compared to men, and the many magazines and media products out there intended for women help to reinforce that a woman's appearance is (supposed to be) the most important part of her life. The very fact that the vast majority of cases of anorexia nervosa are with women while at the same time this same cohort must deal with the above mentioned conditions while trying to integrate into society should raise a serious question from anyone who is told there is simply some genetic vulnerability specifically in women that is the cause of anorexia.

Let's go all the way back to childhood for a second. As Piaget explains it, a female in any culture would begin to assimilate a way of life, i.e., cultural beliefs and expectations, through her experiences. The assimilated experiences and social learning creates what has been called a "schema" or the lens by which one views the world. The schema becomes like a filter for interpreting reality, such as how one views one's body as being too overweight according to mainstream cultural standards. To varying degrees, a person's schema can close off alternate interpretations of reality. Some people highly appraise their cultural standards much more than others, depending on the person's circumstances, goals, needs, or desires.

Do you see the picture that is emerging? Women may have similar brain structures and be a part of the same in-group (or culture) but each person can still have a unique experience. What happens in the cases of the women who develop anorexia nervosa? The most obvious thing is they begin to value their appearance beyond what is expected of them, much like an overachiever. They may also develop what should be considered a phobia--the fear of becoming fat and unattractive. When the fear goes beyond a certain threshold it is manifested by an eating disorder like anorexia.

According to Neal and Davidson in the book Abnormal Psychology (1999), to directly observe families and find no abnormal disturbances does NOT negate the child's own perception, but it's only direct observation of the families of those diagnosed with anorexia that is lacking. Research relies on self-reports. When parents answer questionaires indicating they think there is nothing wrong in the family, it doesn't mean the child's perception is wrong, such as in the cases the child feels there is poor communication but parents do not. One of the most common similarities found with women diagnosed with anorexia is that while they report high levels of conflict in the family (Kent and Clopton, 1992) their parents do not, and this may be some evidence of disturbed family relationships (Humphrey, 1986). What we have is mixed evidence that parenting plays some undetermined role, not NO evidence as the journalist flat out lied about.

Moreover, the parents of a woman diagnosed with anorexia are part of the same society enforcing the codes of behavior women are supposed to follow. The extent to which they conform to the convention can very well contribute to what they may expect from their daughter. So, in regard to the claim that there is no evidence that family life or parenting is part of the cause for anorexia, all you need to do is find any study that shows parents are either reinforcing gender roles and differentially treating daughters compared to their sons. It's an indirect influence. Some parents start their differential gender treatment even before the baby is born (e.g., painting the room pink instead of blue), and children can take gender stereotypes to the extreme (Lips 1997). I don't expect the journalist to see it this way though because she obviously wants to isolate family life as outside the scope of sociocultural factors and decide for all of us that the society a woman lives in is less important compared to some unknown and supposed female gene.

Let's consider the proposterous argument reflected in the language of the second Reuters article: Genes play a "bigger" role than environment. How could you possibly do scientific research to validate such a claim without knowing all the variables involved? Do we just draw the dividing line and say nature (genes) is now 75% responsible for anorexia and environment is maybe 25%? Where would such numbers validly be derived? It's much more about what one "expert" WANTS to believe, and much less about all the available research you can find. You can find evidence to support whichever position you WANT to believe. The research that finds anorexia "runs in families" tells us very little about any possible genetic links because it doesn't control for the social learning that's a big part of family life including sibling relationships, parent-parent relationship and parent-child relationship. Twin studies look for "concordance" among each pair (i.e., both twins are diagnosed with anorexia) and when the monozygotic twins have a higher concordance rate compared to dizygotic twins, there are doctors and others who want to jump for joy and proclaim, AH HA! Now we have the evidence that it's really BIOLOGY that causes anorexia! However, this is seriously misleading the public. The bio-related (twin) studies are not conclusive, not easily replicated, and certainly DO NOT control for all possible cultural variables and the effects of social learning, unless the twins were raised in utter isolation from each other. The only identical twin study that can do this requires one twin to be raised in a completely different culture than the other twin, and each culture cannot have the same ideals when it comes to a woman's body type.

There's another flaw inherent in twin studies. Whether you have a twin or not, the brain does not develop in isolation of social learning experiences. The assumption in twin studies is that if the twins were reared apart this controls for the environment's influence, but that's not necessarily the case. All siblings have bonding experiences with each other, but twins have a special bonding experience. Twins are literally told over and over from an early age that they are just like each other. So, they begin to learn they are expected to look and act the same. Every twin study out there has this as an uncontrolled extraneous variable.

Research that has at it's inception the purpose of finding the biological "underpinnings" of anorexia are coming from the leading "experts" that managed to get their studies published and supported by other groups who also support the leading approach to mental illness, which is the MEDICAL MODEL and the MEDICAL INDUSTRY. They want to a) convince everyone that treating behavioral disorders is the same as treating a disease like diabetes, and b) offer to the public some form of expensive patented gene therapy or new prescription drug that will somehow compensate for those bad genes telling you that you look fat when you look in the mirror despite being wafer thin, and you know there are people who would be willing to take the drugs no matter what the side effects are. Despite risks of side effects (such as what's officially being called "Serotonin Syndrome"), many women diagnosed with anorexia receive anti-depressants for treatment despite the symptoms of major depression not necessarily involving weight loss. (In fact, depression can be associated with weight gain). Serotonin level is only a biological correlate of both depression and anorexia and not necessarily the root cause of anything.

One more point regarding studies that involve parents of women diagnosed with anorexia. Are you going to find parents with children who ended up with an eating disorder waiting in line to volunteer for a study trying to determine if parenting style contributes to a disorder? On the contrary, you will more likely find parents standing in line to sign up for research that is searching for some genetic link because this takes all focus off any possible blame that could be assigned to how parenting may have contributed to development of an eating disorder. If more and more evidence surfaces that anorexia is hopelessly "in the genes" it supposedly provides the evidence that parents, the fashion industry, etc., can all be considered innocent bystanders when another woman is diagnosed with anorexia, right? Wrong.

It deeply saddens me when I see women contribute to the perpetuation of their own oppression. Our patriarchal society tells women what they are supposed to look like as well as the consequences for not complying. Parents can fool themselves all they want believing that they don't contribute to the development of their child's behavior. Need vindication? Just find all the research that supports the medical model's hypothesis that genes are automatically making a person act a certain way. Then we no longer have to be held responsible for our children or the quality of our society. They will tell me I am ignoring the research, and I will continue to tell them they are ignoring two things: a) the limitations of the scientific method as it pertains to human behavior and b) the bias of a medical model that gives biological factors (and the opinions of bio-experts) the highest appraisal.

In case you forgot what biodeterminism is, you can go here:

http://biodeterminism.blogspot.com/2006/05/what-is-biodeterminism.html

In the latest of biodeterminist-related scandals throughout the world, researchers claimed to have found a gene supposedly related to aggressive behavior (nicknamed the "warrior gene") to be twice as high among the Maori people in New Zealand compared to the Anglo population. The finding is being used to explain why the domestic rates of violence in New Zealand are high among those committed by the indigenous Maori population, and the researchers also go so far as trying to say the gene is responsible for their "risk-taking" behaviors such as gambling and smoking.

While the finding has outraged the Maori people, here's what the researcher told New Zealand radio: "I believe this gene has an influence on behavior of humans in general, but I also believe that influence is rather small."

Really? Then WHY did you link the gene to the behavior of a specific ethnic group? Why did you suggest to a genetics council the very reductionistic viewpoint that the gene's influence somehow accounts for the aggressive behavior of the Maori people--the part of the population in New Zealand that has been losing status among the general population ever since the Anglo culture took over? You mean the Maori are NOT supposed to like being looked upon as some kind of backwards indigenous people compared to the "lesser-violent" Anglo peoples?

The approach that says aggression is inbred through genes may hold to some extent for animals like dogs, but when it comes to human beings the matter is particularly more complex. Human beings have a consciousness unlike what dogs experience because human beings have a neocortex. (I'm not saying dogs have no consciousness or make no decisions, it's just likely to be quite different than humans.) You can't say that a gene suspected of being linked to aggressive behavior is the CAUSE of aggressive behavior because if this was the case everybody that has such a gene would act in an obvious aggressive manner. Without looking at the research that supports whatever claim is being made about the "warrior gene," I know you don't find 100% of the time when the person's DNA analysis indicates the presence of the gene the person's behavior is typically violent. Do you have any idea how many hundreds of genes within the entire gene pool can be related to violent behavior? The same situation exists with something like intelligence, which has hundreds if not thousands of different genes contibuting to it. What are biodeterminists in New Zealand standing on when it comes to some supposed "genetic link" when it comes to more "aggressive" behavior among the Maori?-- one tiny gene with a label of "the warrior."

This label is fooling us as much as the influence of any one gene when it comes to behavior, but our desire to want knowledge based on making human behavior as easy as the effect of one gene has been running rampant.

To downplay the influence of social conditions, cultural factors, the experience of the individual, existential issues, and even politics to the extent that you focus on one gene as the determinant of human behavior is biodeterminism at its worst. Just think about the ramifications for prejudice against the Maori when it comes to people not understanding the limitations of a scientific approach that implicitly encourages biodeterminism. Can't you see people in the Anglo populations of New Zealand being told about this finding and then going around saying the Maori people have some kind of "bad" gene? Look at this quote I found on another blog regarding the finding:

"[The gene also] goes a long way to explaining some of the problems Maori have. Obviously, this means they are going to be more aggressive and violent and more likely to get involved in risk-taking behaviour like gambling. They’re much more likely to binge drink than other groups which are more likely to moderate their drinking."

--Obviously?! What's more obvious is that this kind of blatant reductionism that reduces behavior down to the result of a gene is not science; it's a perfect example of scientism.

Read the sad article for yourself:

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyID=2006-08-09T075318Z_01_SYD231417_RTRUKOC_0_US-NEWZEALAND-GENE-VIOLENCE.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsHome-C3-scienceNews-3

How People Are Being Influenced by Biodeterminism

When I was visiting some of the mental health facilities in San Diego while searching for an internship, I sat in on several interviews with people who were being diagnosed and "treated." One morning, there was a woman who had been to a local emergency room. She was desperate (but not suicidal), very emotionally upset, homeless, had a "history" of mental illness, and after a "psych-evaluation" at the hospital was referred to the facility I happened to be visiting that day. Knowing that I was a graduate student, the interviewer told me that he tries to show the people who come into the facility empathy and understanding. He began asking the woman in a soft-hearted voice what happened, and she explained that she checked herself into the emergency room because she was living with a friend who threw her out and had nowhere else to go. She told us how she had gotten married at a young age to a guy that she was in love with, and they had two children together. However, not uncommon with people who get married in this country, something went wrong. One day, her husband told her two things: First, he didn't want to be married to her anymore because he had met somebody that he "really" fell in love with. Then, he told her that he was taking the children with him. The woman really didn't know what to do at that point because she was unemployed. The guy threatened to go to child care services at the time if she tried to stop him from taking the kids. They hadn't bought a house together, and she had nowhere to go. She tried to move back in with her mother for a while, but the mother was not very supportive of her daughter's emotional response to the events. Meanwhile, her former husband was telling the kids and his new wife that she was a nut-job and to stay away from her. Her mother said to just get over it and move on. Of course, she missed seeing her children, but didn't have the resources to go through the legal battles. When this had gone on long enough the mother convinced her daughter to see a psychiatrist, and he told her she had bipolar disorder. He put her on medication. As time passed the woman didn't improve very much, nor did her circumstances, and eventually the mother couldn't take it and didn't want anything to do with her. She went through programs in other facilities, sometimes living in residences that were connected to mental health centers, and it was basically like being on a roller coaster. She couldn't hold back the tears at times in the interview (and I certainly don't understand why she would have). I distinctly remember her saying that nobody has ever really been able to help her get over having been treated so terribly by somebody that she truly loved.

The interviewer told her not to worry and that they were going to give her the help she needs. He then began a more structured interview related to the diagnosis that was written on the records from the hospital emergency room, which of course was bipolar disorder because she was asked at the hospital if she had a "history" of mental illness. He asked about "mood swings" and whether she seemed to have "ups and downs" in her mood and did they seem to create a problem for her. She agreed. He told her to go to another area of the facility to complete the paperwork needed to become a resident.
When she left I talked a bit with the interviewer and I told him how I can't believe the kind of lives some people have. It really sounded as if the guy she loved might have been a genuine jerk. What did my compatriot say? I still can't believe it. This is what he basically said:
Some guys don't know how to live with people who are mentally ill, especially in a case that involves bipolar disorder. They can't take the "ups and downs" because it interferes with the marriage and raising the kids and all. She probably stopped taking her prescription, but we'll fix that. "She needs to take her meds."

It's a good thing that was the last facility I was visiting for the semester because I had really had enough. Where was this great "empathy" he was telling me about? The woman sat there telling us about all the causes of the psychological distress in her life, but her life's circumstances that existed had been medicalized down to a problem with unstable chemical imbalances in her brain. Did anything this woman said to the interviewer really register with him? Maybe he had enough “expertise” to know that the events in the woman's life created obvious psychological distress, but now the woman's condition was no longer about psychological distress. It had turned into a brain disease. However, if he could have stepped out of the convention of the bio-medical model for a second, he might have been able to see that he was blaming the victim. But no, the influence of biodeterminism had already become too strongly embedded within his schema and subsequent appraisal of reality.

This is only one example of how students, professionals, and the public are being swooned by a way of life encouraging the idea that biology is destiny.

More to come...

What is Biodeterminism?

Biodeterminism, which is short for biological determinism, is a form of scientism that says biology is destiny, and I'm not talking about just your blood type or the color of your eyes. Sadly, the idea that biology is destiny has become inflated through American culture, and biodeterminism is now largely shaping our convention, particulary when it comes to our understanding of human behavior.

In general, determinism is a perspective on life that says things are preordained and unstoppable. In regard to human behavior, determinists stress the predisposition people are supposedly born with to behave a certain way or the "traits" of a specific personality that a person is supposedly bound by. Biodeterminism places biology and physiology in the spotlight as the most important factor in cause and effect relationships regarding human behavior and often leads to the assumption that a cause and effect relationship exists even when a research study only describes a biological correlate of behavior, which has become very popular since the invention of computer models, PET scans, and magnetic imagery. However, this electronic gadgetry allows us to describe brain activity, not discern cause and effect relationships regarding human behavior outside the lab. Biodeterminism often results in reductionistic interpretations of human behavior that ignore the many other factors that influence behavior including those associated with culture, socialization and the environment, existential issues, and the unique events and experiences that help shape a person's life (not to be confused with the Skinnerian form of "shaping").

Biological determinism assumes that there is only one unidirectional relationship in which biology causes behavior, rather than a bidirectional relationship in which biology can affect behavior but behavior can also affect a person's biology. Alongside our mainstream culture of consumerism, it's the kind of thinking that led to the now rampant use of drugs to treat almost every psychological "disorder" out there.

Biological determinism manifests itself when someone believes that bio/medical/genetic research fully explains human behavior (often in terms of hormones, genes, DNA, neurotransmitters, and so-called "chemical imbalances"). It goes without saying that any behavior comes with a correlated physiological state. However, to say that a person's physiology itself is the cause of behavior and to look for the evidence that supports only a relationship between biology and behavior is particularly misleading. Except through the obvious use of drugs, no one has demonstrated that someone's biology first changes or assumes a certain state and then the person will behave a certain way. There are artificial ways of inducing behavior. However, outside the controlled environment of the lab the real world contains innumerable factors influencing behavior other than raw human physiology.

In general, the scientific approach to studying human beings does so in such a way that suggests we are just objects and not beings with a consciousness. We go far to find the evidence that behavior is automatic and predictable based on brain physiology and the environmental situations. When it comes to psychobiology, what we think we understand while focused exclusively on the brain is at the cost of what we never understand about the mind. Consciousness and human experience are assumed to be no more than a bunch of neurons firing. Human experience amounts to nothing greater than a mechanistic sum of your chemical constituents. People are not machines, albeit you can look for the evidence that people are just like machines (if that's what you want), which can then become the conventional approach used for understanding a person’s behavior at the expense of understanding the whole person and what a total human existence is really all about.

I get the distinct impression that some people like a purely biological explanation for human behavior because it supposedly relinquishes responsibility for the way people behave. We can sigh with relief that we are just bound by our nature. Men have more testosterone (which supposedly explains why they commit more acts of violence compared to women), alcoholism "runs in families" (which supposedly means there is an all important genetic factor superceding all other factors), drugs that keep serotonin in the brain in an active state ease some people's depression (which supposedly explains why people get depressed), teens are more prone to suicide because of raging hormones (again, related to depression), and it goes on and on. This understanding of behavior then translates into the other unfortunate allure of the bio-medical model, which is that a pill (or several) can solve all your problems.

The concept that there is ultimately a genetic basis for psychological illness that "runs in the family" is quite absurd. Honestly, what healthy empiricist can trace his or her family roots from the present back to the Middle Ages and before that to demonstrate there has never been any "known" form of psychological illness within the family lineage, thus demonstrating some sort of psychologically "clean" family gene pool? You might as well assume that every single human being in the world has the predisposition for psychological illness because every single human being has the capacity to experience psychological distress. Just because there are scientists who decided to medicalize psychological distress according to a model that assumes the afflicted have a "brain disease" does not mean there is any actual genetic basis that causes the psychological distress. There is a physiological state to ANY given behavior, which does not mean the physiological state causes the behavior. You might as well say that because human beings must consume food for survival, the behavior of eating is the result of a genetic encoding. Does that really explain why anybody eats?

I'm not saying that our study of anatomy has no value, I'm saying humans are so desperate for certainty and desperate for answers to the questions about who we are that many are willing to believe what amounts to no better than lies. You may have heard the statistic that says 1 out of 5 or 1 out of 4 (the numbers keep shifting) people have or will have some psychological disorder in this country, but do you ever realize the statistic is based on the known cases diagnosed through use of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) designed to adhere to the medicalization of psychological distress? According to that approach, the assumption is that as much as 25% of the people in this country have physiological brain illnesses! That's a lot of business for psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical industry.

No one necessarily has a "flaw" in their body's chemistry. Experiencing psychological distress these days is not necessarily a defect in character or a defect of any kind. Only a perfectionist of the worst kind would believe that. If you were to survey people asking them if they've experienced significant psychological distress in their lifetime, the statistic above will be much higher. The mindful know it's not the question, it's how you phrase it that matters.

Please don't create the kind of counterargument that focuses in on the most grossly dysfunctional individuals out there because they don't comprise the majority of the 1 out of 4 or 1 out of 5 statistic above (not that I don't care about them). One of the worst diagnoses ever put into the DSM is the construct (and it is a construct) of schizophrenia (not to be confused with the single psychotic episode), and despite whatever pattern of behavior mental health care professionals think is captured by that diagnosis, the individuals being labeled with it are very poorly understood and very heavily medicated. When I was an undergraduate volunteer at a mental health center and heard about the kind of social conditions, psychological distress, and experiences that some of these clients who fall under the "psychotic" category have to endure in one lifetime, it's no wonder they become so desperate for a new reality that they either completely withdraw, develop delusions, are plagued by chronic drug abuse, or claim to be hallucinating. Once they are labeled, their life stories are completely lost by most people they know (if they have any family or friends at all) because the focus of who they are becomes the definition of the label. The assumption is that they were such misfits BECAUSE of their psychological "brain illnesses," but there is never really any way to isolate the variable of brain physiology for the sake of cause and effect among an infinite number of other variables, albeit many scientists believe they can do so. Even monozygotic twin studies don't find a 100% concordant rate (i.e., twins who are believed to be genetically identical are not always both diagnosed with a disorder), and they don't control for the effects of culture. On top of that, even if you could isolate the person's brain chemistry, you'd never be able to demonstrate that first the individual's brain chemistry changed, and then the person's behavior occurred.

Of course, scientists and people who support the bio-medical model will claim all humans share the same basic physiology, and though this may be true, it still confounds brain anatomy with the conscious and unconscious mind, which develop from a person's unique experiences. A person does not just have a brain, the brain develops through one's experiences. The biodeterminist believes a person's brain development is controlled simply by genetic encoding. However, the brain and the mind are related to one another, but NOT the same thing. The brain is a tangible object, but the mind is not. In their search for certainty, biodeterminists rely on what is tangible and what can be observed, despite whatever half-truths this generates about the human mind.

Despite the existential truth that nobody can be inside another person's mind, biodeterminists confound the brain and the mind and assume since we all have the same basic brain structure, we all basically think alike. The problem with this evaluation is that it ignores what makes each of us unique—the mind that results from our existential experience as individuals in the world. Bio-determinists assume one's experience is only a function of the state of your brain. They will say that the mind is dependant on the brain. However, that does not negate that one's total experience is a function of many factors outside the structure and state of the brain. The focus for the biodeterminist is on what we "know" about the brain at the expense of ignoring how all the other factors can affect one unique individual's intangible mind.

But the existential conditions and environment are often unimportant to the biodeterminist who lives according to the rules of biology as a science. Ironically, on top of the many circumstances that can create a harrowing life experience, some people apparently deserve to be branded with a label like "schizophrenic" and accept the horrible stigma that comes with that label (and others like it) for the rest of their lives. However, even the times when someone seemed to be "perfectly normal," as people love to say (but they never really know), and has the infamous "schizophrenic break," it is not simply the result of a sudden "imbalance" of brain chemistry that then needs to be balanced. Unless you live in some way suspended and disconnected from any other environmental factor, disconnected from any other cultural condition, disconnected from any other being in the world other than yourself, and disconnected from any event that can contribute to your experience of the world, your experience is not simply the result of your chemical constituents. It's just not possible for a human being on this earth to be that disconnected so that the only thing a person becomes is a function of biology!

Remember: Biodeterminists don't just explain psychotic and other "abnormal" behavior in terms of physiology; they explain almost all behavior this way, which leads to the assumption that we have no real control of our lives and the decisions we make. It becomes particularly dangerous to society when most people begin to believe biodeterminists because the public forgets about the many choices both they and the biodeterminists are making while the focus is exclusively on human physiology to explain behavior. Rather than empowering people with a positive message, the biodeterminist perspective underlyingly tells people to surrender to biology. Then, the drugs that are assumed to be needed to "balance" a person's neurochemistry create real chemical imbalances and iatrogenic illnesses (when the treatment is the cause of a disease or ill side effects). People begin to assume even the choices they can or cannot make are bound by their genes and not related to their culture, not their environment, and not what they've learned through experiences. In ways unlike a person's physiological state, these other factors are capable of being changed to produce a positive outcome in someone's life. Hence, the popular slogan of those who are more mindful and want to curb biodeterminism: Biology is not destiny.

© P. Kurtiak, 2006. All rights reserved.

More to come...