Can DNA Kill? Part 2 of 2

Conclusion of yesterday’s column.

Hitler’s Nazism belongs to the history of 1930s and 1940s Europe. But the premises underlying Nazism are alive and well in the United States as of the early twenty-first century. Last year’s tragedy in Connecticut brought that out.

Arthur Beaudet, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine, said the University of Connecticut geneticists are most likely trying to ‘detect clear abnormalities of what we would call a mutation in a gene’or gene abnormalities, and there are some abnormalities that are related to aggressive behavior.’

‘They might look for mutations that might be associated with mental illnesses and ones that might also increase the risk for violence,’ said Beaudet, who is also the chairman
of Baylor College of Medicine’s department of molecular and human genetics.

When I read something like this, a chill goes down my spine. It’s no less a chill than I would feel if a respected university professor were suggesting that one’s racial makeup, eye color or hair color was the perhaps determining factor in making one person a raging killer and another a peaceful individual.

To study the mind of a killer, you must examine how and why a killer thinks as he does. Often these killers are dead by the time the tragedy is over, and it’s hard to attempt to gain their point-of-view. And even when they are alive, they tend to be good at faking remorse or ‘temporary insanity,’ masking their real motives and intentions.

Stanton Samenow, Ph.D., stands at the forefront of unmasking the thinking behind criminal mentalities of all types, and anyone interested ought to read his classic book, ‘Inside the Criminal Mind’ as well as his subsequent follow-up studies. You’ll find the real, objectively defining essence of criminality in these studies, and you’ll see that it has to do with the way a criminal thinks and ‘values’—which helps explain why criminals come in all races, shapes, sizes and eye colors.

According to the ABC News online story, Professor Beaudet believes geneticists should be doing this type of research because there are ‘some mutations that are known to be associated with at least aggressive behavior if not violent behavior.’

‘I don’t think any one of these mutations would explain all of (the mass shooters), but some of them would have mutations that might be causing both schizophrenia and related schizophrenia violent behavior,’ Beaudet said. ‘I think we could learn more about it and we should learn more about it.’

You can see that even Beaudet hedges. Even he must admit that DNA cannot explain everything, nor necessarily even anything relevant to one’s values and choices. He’s admitting his helplessness at being able to identify any other even possible factor in causing criminal behavior such as—oh, I don’t know—the human mind. Or human choices, values, and ideas.

We live in an era of biological determinism. According to this viewpoint, biology is the only explanation for anything. In the United States, the motivation for advancing such a viewpoint is generally to make excuses, to let criminals off easily and perhaps to illustrate how one racial group is the victim of another—thereby generating more support for the expansion of state socialism, an explicit goal of most academics. These motives are bad and destructive enough, since the advance of socialism in the United States is clearly not leading to a booming economy and the innovation that used to dominate our more capitalist society. Instead, it’s leading to more public dependence on the multitrillion dollar ‘dole’ and greater restrictions in individual rights; from purchasing your own medical care to purchasing a gun for self-defense.

But biological determinism is even more dangerous than it has so far manifested itself in the United States. Left unchecked, the idea that DNA and genes are the root cause of everything will, if left unchallenged, ultimately provide the rationalization for a totalitarian dictatorship. One follows from the other, because a people who are exclusively the products of their genes cannot be trusted to self-govern, not even as socialist democrats.

A free society is the only proper society suitable for the sanity, well-being and progress of mankind. But without an accurate and realistic view of man and man’s mind, we’re not
going to see the proper kind of society again, at least not any time soon.

 

Source: Shushannah Walshe, December 27, 2012, ABC News online, ‘School Shooter’s DNA to Be Studied.’

 

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