Posted by dj on July 7, 2000, at 22:22:48
In reply to Re: An eloquent M.D. writes about genetic(s) hype... » SLS, posted by SLS on July 7, 2000, at 8:26:21
> > I'd love to see you or anyone attempt to refute the facts he cites, eloquently or not. The issue at essence is the historic argument of nature vs. nurture and he argues for the systemic interaction of both. Anyone who focuses on one only at the exclusion of the other is foolish, in my view.
>
> I am a bit confused. Who wrote the following?
>
> "In the case of schizophrenia, a mental illness it is currently fashionable to consider genetic..."
>
> Fashionable?
>
> I think this one word drew my attention.
>I wrote the top para. and the fashionable comment was from Dr. Mate. Anyone who has seriously examined the history of medicine, both modern and ancient can tell you that doctors are just as susceptable to medical and academic fashions as anyone else. Any good book on depression discusses various competing theories of depression as does "Undoing Depression" which I cited above and elsewhere.
I've also previously cited: "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers : An Updated Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping" by Robert M. Sapolsky, which I was re-examining this afternoon and will quote some segments of below, from his chapter between links between stress and depression.
First though a note on the author from an Amazon.com overview on another of his books:
"As a professor of biology and neuroscience at Stanford and a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant," Robert Sapolsky carries impressive credentials. Best of all, he's a gifted writer who possesses a delightfully devilish sense of humor. In these essays, which range widely but mostly focus on the relationships between biology and human behavior, hard and intricate science is handled with a deft touch that makes it accessible to the general reader."In Zebras S. writes:
"...depression can have a gentic component, as shown with a variety of pretty complicated studies. But, of vast importance, those studies have shown that just because someone may have one or more genes for depression, that doesn't guarantee they will develop the disease; a rough estimate, derived by cutting across a lot of different styles of genetic approachs, suggests that having a genetic propensity toward depression only gives you about a fifty percent chance of getting the disease. This is one of the critical lessons of behavioural genetics, and one that can't be emphasized often enough - genes in this realm are rarely about inevitability, but instead about vulnerability. And what that means is that an environmental trigger is needed to turn that vunerability into an overt disease...as the evidence in this chapter makes abundantly clear, depression is a gentic disorder of being vunerable to a stressful environment."At the end of the book he discusses some ways of dealing with stress. But as with ADs, your milage may vary...
Sante!
dj
poster:dj
thread:39430
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000630/msgs/39747.html