Genetics and Criminal Behavior
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-06-23/genetics-and-criminal-behavior
Forensic researchers are taking another look at controversial claims about the role of genetics in criminal behavior. We discuss the ethical and policy implications.
Guests
John Paul Wright
Professor of Criminal Justice, The University of Cincinnati
Arthur Caplan
Professor of Bioethics and Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania
John Laub
Director, National Institute of Justice (NIJ) at U.S. Department of Justice; Joint recipient of Stockholm Prize in Criminology (2011)
Benson George Cooke
President, Association of Black Psychologists
John Butler
leader of the applied genetics group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology
Comments
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While discussing criminal behavior, you did not include the extreme crimes made by "white collars" and criminal behavior such as that of Bernie Madoff... bank executives, ENRON that destroyed peoples' livelihoods, took their retirement options, savings and destoryed families.
One of the biggest issues with the research is what Mr. Cooke and some of the other guests and callers have tried to make. Crime is not a set or static thing, crime is socially defined by power groups, and CAN be prejudice in nature. There are numerous examples of this throughout our history. In some cases people or groups were in effect criminalized (Jim Crow laws) in other cases certain behaviors or activities were criminalized to control groups (drug scheduling to control the anti-war movement under Nixon). The point being not all crime is the same, and it always has a context.
Good point. I wonder how much of the research focuses on violent crime and not white collar, nonviolent crime. In the case of Enron, these people did not exhibit anti-social behavior in the sense of not being able to function well with other people. However, there was an element of ruthlessness that enabled them to do what they did. The other big part of the problem, is that in many cases some of the acts that groups like Enron committed were not considered criminal.
I know Mr. Cooke was trying to make this point, but the discussion was too focused on the genetic aspect. Your point is well made, if you don't catch and prosecute all anti-social behavior, regardless of who your daddy is, then the studies will be skewed.
I believe that NPR owes us an apology for this show. Listening was like watching a train wreck, a catastrophy that would have been less likely, I think, if Diane Rehm had been present. The difficulty with research in this topic is similar to the difficulty with which your host, guests, and callers have in discussing it. Each is coming to the table with a particular viewpoint which they want to confirm or a predjudice which they cannot erase. I noted that you did not discuss the "gene" or the physical chromosomal segment which is supposedly connected to crime. As a molecular biologist, I find it ludicrous that one/some genes are supposedly linked to the complex behavior that involves not only the make-up of the "criminal" individual but the complex series of interactions with society that LEAD up to the criminal act. I dare you to try to find that gene.
The show's discussion deteriorated to one of the worst bits of racism I have ever heard broadcast, in which every discussion point seemed to revolve around the negative implications that such "research" would result in, i.e., that certain genes that are associated with African decent would somehow also be associated with criminality. Aside from the fact that this research is scientifically absurd, why does NPR feel that it is okay to host discussion in which it is clear that the starting assumption of the host and many callers is that such research WOULD establish a link between race and crime?
I am disgusted with the host in particular, who did not prep well enough for a potentially volatile show to understand the SIMPLE difference between using a DNA fingerprint to compare to a criminal database and searching the genome for genes linked with traits. The irresponsibleness of NPR in allowing an ignorant host to run this circus sideshow allowed this inane discussion to become a rare display of utter ignorance on NPR. This show truly turned my stomach… using the "science" specter to disguise (badly) pure racism.
"Bobo Amerigo wrote:
At age 3, a close friend's daughter went to sleep a typical toddler and woke up the next day a completely different child.
From then on, the daughter created serious problems for herself at home and at school. Her [well-educated, upper middle class] parents used every resource made known to them to try to help her but nothing worked. She was murdered in her early 20s. Her diary revealed a life of irresponsible sex and drug use that she would promise to herself to change, but then she'd fall back into it. If was as if she couldn't get out.
Later, in an unrelated family history project, my friend discovered that every other generation on her mother's side had a murderer in it.
Is it impossible that some genetic trait played a role in the daughter's bad choices?
June 23, 2011 - 10:34 am"
It has been the fashion, since the 1970s to blame it on sexual abuse, preferably being raped by her Father.
Since the 1960s, a lot of that stuff was covertly encouraged by Mothers who felt, often wrongly, that they had been sexually and socially repressed.
She didn't start the Sex and Drugs when she was 3, a lot of things happened to her between 3 and whatever age she achieved enough autonomy to start the dangerous stuff.
Look at the stuff that goes on in the average College Dorm.
She couldn't quit because she was addicted.
In spite of profound societal changes, we still underestimate the sex drive of Girls and Women. The 14 year old Girl who blows away her Parents with a Shotgun because they attempted to interfere with her relationship with her 20 year old Boyfriend are no longer a rarity.
The Girls transformation at 3 sounds almost like Autism.
Monte Haun mchaun@hotmail.com
GenGal, you are absolutely correct. NPR owes us all an apology for discussing this quackery. The entire topic is recycled Nazi eugenics garbage. I remember when Ronald Reagan appointed a gentlemen to head NIH, if I recall correctly, who called compared African Americans to rhesus monkeys. Anyone remember that guy? That same person was trying to put forth this genetic testing for criminality non-sense. The director at the National Institute for Justice at the DOJ needs to bring this trash testing to a halt, else line up all the criminals, grad their kids out of Exeter and Andover and put them on the gurnie to run their blood. Picture that and not just kids from dirt poor neighborhoods being tested. Run everyone's blood who's forefathers stood at and participated in lynching parties and picnics while African Americans were hung high and burned alive and otherwise murdered for 500 years. We all need to contact Eric Holder and see what can be done about Dr. Taub and this inane 'research.' Stop taking us back into the past of fake, prejudiced science. We've been down this dark road road before and it leads to dangerous dumbness perpetrated by so called scientists. Aren't we sick of repeating the worst of history. Dr. Taub needs some assigned reading and his agenda haulted.
I’m wondering if anyone here actually listened to the discussion today. If you follow the posts on the board, one can actually see how the idea of race develops into a straw man. Bio-social criminology actually does more to lay bare the shortcomings of racist thought. GeneGal, as a molecular biologist, surely you must understand phenotypic expression. Neuropsychological deficits arising from neonatal trauma, ingestion of toxins, heredity, etc., have conclusively been shown to alter one’s ability to regulate behaviors among a number of axes such as those I mentioned earlier. This relationship exists across ALL races. An African-American victim of fetal alcohol syndrome will enter the fray with the same shunted ability to maximize their life opportunities as a Caucasian child, Asian child, and so on. Certainly the argument exists that life outcomes for these folk thought to be crime-prone can be tempered by environment (think of a well-off family having more resources and positive community relationships to devote to a young child exhibiting problematic behaviors than a family that is struggling to make ends meet), but the child’s problem behaviors are not themselves a racial phenomenon. Crime is a social construct, and no one on today’s panel argued otherwise. However, the inability to regulate one’s behavior is not. Those who routinely fail to do so often end up running afoul of the law.
This whole discourse speaks to Dr. Laub’s point: this is a discussion that needs to be had. It’s shameful to see NPR listeners, what I would assume to be those on the “right side of the Bell Curve” (deliberate pun), sticking their fingers in their ears and decrying most of the discussants as racists because of their limited understanding of the literature. The supreme irony here is in those who claimed the discussants (each highly-regarded in the scholarly community in their own right) have an axe to grind or prejudices to support, when the listeners themselves exhibited that same behavior. The body of scholarship that exists today is the product of decades of interdisciplinary study and to dismiss it as “quackery” belies ignorance not only of the scientific process but of social science in general. The discussants’ work has been rigorously vetted time and again in the peer-review process… comments on this forum clearly have not.
Millenia of the Feudal System has caused the White American to evolve a Feudal Gene rendering Him a throughly innate, inborn, inbred Lackey. Look at the record, no indignity too humiliating from our de facto, if not Titled, aristocracy of the Bushes and their Jew and Anglican middle rank associates who are the real interface between the oppressors and the oppressed. These are the Journalists, Clergy, Generals, Bankers, cops, Legislators, Economists, Business Persons, Educators, the Gentry and lower Peers, that really keep the Machine humming and who are well rewarded for their Loyalty.
Blacks lack this Feudal Gene which explains their reluctance to accept the petty as well as monstrous atrocities we White Commoners must daily accept without protest.
Monte Haun mchaun@hotmail.com
"Joseph Horgan wrote:
First, the major reason why there's a disproportionate percentage of blacks in prison is simple: A racist judiciary.
...
Can the panelists discuss the connexion between lead and other heavy metals and toxics in our environment and anti-social behavior?
June 23, 2011 - 10:51 am"
Some research was done in the 1960s on possible relationships between Heavy Metals and crime. Attractive since lead soldered Copper plumbing was becoming popular. Mercury has long been known to cause neurological problems. Don't know what became of the research.
About that time, Researchers discovered a Super Male, the result of a doubling of some genetic property, which was found in many Prison Inmates and generally violent Males. Don't know what became of that either.
Imagine the National Institute of Justice accepting at face value, the American system of Criminal Justice!!
Psychopathic Cops more pathological than the Citizens they kill, frame, beat and torture with impunity. Medical Examiners and Forensic Labs so corrupt AND incompetent as to render the whole system worse than worthless.
Appeal and Supreme Courts more interested in Process than Justice. Legislatures bent on converting nearly every Human foible into Felonies.
Prisons overflowing with mentally ill who must daily endure a Behavoirist psychological therapy that believes enough brutality will rehabilitate the prisoners that the Jailers themselves have driven mad.
Is this your Cohort, Dr Laub? Your research is S__T. You cowards have caught the Stockholm Syndrome from the Kabal that has turned the Nation into a Concentration Camp.
Incidently, Dr Laub, I (Vaguely) recall a famous longitudinal study started in the late 1930s that compared Male Juvenile Delinquents subjected to psychological treatment to Boys untreated. The treated Boys went on to commit many more crimes and were jailed more often than the Control Boys.
Monte Haun mchaun@hotmail.com
Ahhhhh yes. Genetics again!
Let's blame genetics on every deviant behavior and every man-made disease. LOTS of $$$$$ tied up in genetic research and it's just so sexy and intellectual. Provides tons of jobs too, the new bio-engineered age...Problem is, it's as contrived as the food system that is mostly to blame for for our physical organ failures. The brain is another vital organ and when it is poisoned, like most of our organs are today in the food system from hell, behaviors manifest in exactly what we see in criminal deviancy.
Whether humans manifest physical or mental disorders, it is ALL related to the same exact root cause, nutrient deficiency or excess of toxic load in our bodies.
Not too much $$ or glory to be had in changing behavior by changing diet, but THAT IS THE KEY.
Read any of Barbara Reed Stitts books, the Biochemistry of Crime, or Food and Behavior.
Read Conscious Eating by Dr. Gabriel Cousens...
If we do not nourish our brains, we get sick both physically and mentally.
It IS that simple.
This show is politically motivated too. This show is made to make all the people who feel the same as these professors come out of the woodwork. Obama is in office and lots of people dont like the fact that a half black man is presidentl. Yes I did say half black he is also half white.
Are black people are genetically violent? No. I would state to the contrary we are genectically gifted in order to take opression, slavery, beatings, lychings, bombings, racism, name calling such as N....., fat, black, ugly. I am 35 years and know the pain that blacks have endured in this country. Yet through it all we go to wars beside everyone else and fight for this country. As far back as the Cival War to the current war. Still blacks are able to rise above it all and turn out superstars in all professions. I reside in Alabama racism still alive and well. All the businesses in the black areas have been closed. Except for Wal-Mart and many gas stations. I guess it takes a lot of gas to get to the other side of town!
your are absolutely right. I agree
In response to Genegal's comments: I'm so glad to know I'm not the only one who picked up on the ineptitude of the host and her clear bias. It was not only evident that she was unprepared for the show, but she carried her own prejudices into the conversation and it was readily apparent in addition to being annoying.
point well taken. But other studies that have lasted for decades have proven to be wrong as well. It's true that most of Fruadian thought has been dismissed incurrnet psychological studies. however, I find this quite interesting. considering that any study done can and often, when it comes to sociology and psycology, be biased. that can skew results.
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Grady Lee Howard wrote:
... The USA has suffered a coup by the 1% , but supplicating reactionaries are cheering the coup plotters. If these same types were in Syria they's be throwing their daughters at the Alawite elite. Always the whipped dogs crawl to their abusive masters.
November 3, 2011 - 5:24 pm
mchaun wrote:
Not all richly rewarded whores are directly richly rewarded. Many more whores, like ecgbert, hope that by sucking up to their Imperial Masters, parroting their silly slogans, condemning regulation, for example, they will be richly (for them) rewarded by being allowed to wait under the Master's banquet table with the Master's Mastiffs to grab whatever crumbs that fall from the Table.
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Monte Haun mchaun@hotmail.com
September 15, 2011 - 8:46 pm
mchaun wrote:
Millenia of the Feudal System has caused the White American to evolve a Feudal Gene rendering Him a throughly innate, inborn, inbred Lackey. Look at the record, no indignity too humiliating from our de facto, if not Titled, aristocracy of the Bushes and their Jew and Anglican middle rank associates who are the real interface between the oppressors and the oppressed. These are the Journalists, Clergy, Generals, Bankers, cops, Legislators, Economists, Business Persons, Educators, the Gentry and lower Peers, that really keep the Machine humming and who are well rewarded for their Loyalty.
Blacks lack this Feudal Gene which explains their reluctance to accept the petty as well as monstrous atrocities we White Commoners must daily endure without protest.
Monte Haun mchaun@hotmail.com
June 23, 2011 - 5:08 pm
Sorry, didn't mean to post the above on this Site.
Monte Haun mchaun@hotmail.com