Monday, Jan. 20, 2003
Children And Violence: The Search for a Murder Gene
By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK;Alice Park/New York
With their thick, wavy hair parted neatly on the side, cherubic faces and unfailingly polite manners, Derek King, 14, and his brother Alex, 13, come across like choirboys. But the Florida teenagers were sentenced last November to eight and seven years in prison, respectively, after admitting that they had bludgeoned their father to death with a baseball bat. The previous year brought two other trials of Florida kids who had committed murder: Lionel Tate, also 14, got a life sentence for beating a 6-year-old playmate to death, and Nathaniel Brazill, another 14-year-old, was sent to prison for 28 years for killing his middle-school teacher.
What could possibly turn kids this young into brutal killers? The recipe for violence is almost certainly a mix of bad genes and a bad environment, and the evidence is strong that the recipe is cooked up very early in life. Until about a decade ago, most experts assumed that it was a violent or impoverished upbringing that led to violent adults. "We're depraved," says one of the gang members in West Side Story, "on account of we're deprived." Indeed, studies had suggested a correlation between a harsh childhood and later criminality. The link was strongest for those who had been physically abused as kids. Still, not all abused children grow up to perpetrate violence in turn. Something else must be going on.
One possible answer began to emerge after a Dutch woman consulted her doctor about whether to have kids. Her family had a history of violence, including rape and attempted murder. Would her children be violent too, she asked? Her doctor consulted geneticist Hans Brunner, who discovered that the family carried a defective gene: it made too much of an enzyme, called monoamine oxidase A, resulting in excessive destruction of neurotransmitters that help keep us calm and happy.
The finding thrilled some scientists--here, finally, was an explanation for criminality--and appalled others, who feared that if genes dictate behavior, it could lead to genetic typecasting of entire races. But lots of violent men don't have the defective gene, while many non-criminals do. Here, too, the simple explanation was clearly not the whole story.
Last summer, though, scientists at the University of Wisconsin reported on a long-term study of 400 boys that had been going on for more than a quarter-century. The scientists had collected DNA from the boys and recorded their behavior at regular intervals. As with the earlier research, scientists found that neither genes alone nor childhood abuse alone could explain adult violence. But of the boys who had both mutation and early abuse, fully 85% had committed a violent act as an adult. The implication, says Terrie Moffitt, a professor of psychology at Wisconsin: "Genes influence people's susceptibility or resistance to environmental 'pathogens.'" Someone with a low genetic propensity will have to be pushed very hard to become violent; another individual with a different genetic makeup might have a hair trigger.
But this study is hardly the last word on the genetic roots of violence. There are almost certainly other genes involved and other kinds of life stress that can contribute to violence. Moffitt and her colleagues are already planning more experiments to isolate other factors that might be involved. As for predicting whether a particular child will become violent, no one can be sure when that might be possible. For now, we will have to deal with kids like the King brothers the way we always have: one case at a time. --By Michael D. Lemonick. Reported by Alice Park/New York
Questions for Consideration… then ANSWERING:
- In regards to violence, what can we conclude from this article about “nature vs. nurture?” ______
- It’s the year 2135. Every child born in the US for the past 50 years has had a genetic test done at birth to determine whether or not they possess the violence gene. Those who do have a “V” tattooed on their left ear. Using this scenario, predict the implications of a “violence” gene in:
- Family Planning/Reproduction ______
- Effects on society: adoption rates; orphanages; abandoned children ______
- Effects on the judicial system (specifically in regard to juvenile crime) ______
- Rights of the individual w/ the defective gene ______
- Behavior of an individual w/ the defective gene ______
- Behavior of others on an individual with a defective gene ______
- ARGUE for or against the statement: We should continue research into genetic explanations for abnormal psychological behavior. Support your argument with information from the article, your text, or your own research (cite sources). ______