Question:
Schizophrenia and Genetics?
Answer:
NOT IN OUR GENES is ideological b.s. The best book, which you should
definitely find, is Irving Gottesman's SCHIZOPHRENIA GENESIS (Publisher is
Freeman I think). By the way, the above posting is inaccurate in suggesting that the whole
field is "a landmine of ideological disputes." Lewontin et al. are Marxist
crackpots, in this domain at least. I can't think of a single interesting
psychiatric fact that has been better established than a substantial role
of genetics for schizophrenia. The particulars (e.g., the specific
mechanisms, major genes versus polygenes) are hotly debated
scientifically, but that's healthy.
I discussed NOT IN OUR GENES with a biogist at the university of Oklahoma
who did behavioral inheritance in insects. he substantially agreed with
leewontin, who by the way is a pretty good geneticist. being marxist
hasn't stopped leewontin from having good arguments, most of which have
nothing to do with marxism but statistics and interpretation of
human experiments. I would like to hear from some geneticists and
biologist on this issues not psycologists who don't understand their
own statistics and worse, psychiatrists. I understand quantitative genetics as well as any Oklahoman bug
geneticist. If you want to understand why Lewontin is more or less full of
it on this, perhaps I can help you, but you'll have to be specific about
which of his claims impress you as devastating to the schizophrenia
literature. the basis of twin studies is the "heritability statistic".
According to bug geneticists and leewontin, this statistic as use by animal
and plant geneticists is the ratio of the variance due to genetics over
the sum of the variances due to both genetics and environment. the statistic
used in twin studies is the correlation statistic. the correlation statistic
can be 1.0 and environmental influences can be arbtrarily large. I've had
6 hours of mathematical statistics plus i used to reduce data from medical
experiments as a technician. While it is true that Leewontin et al. are solid scientists in their fields,
they have a penchant for dialetical materialism, conspiracy theories of
class warfare, etc. that are residues of their Marxist youth. If Leewontin
would focus more on the nonlinear dynamics and less on dialectic oppositions,
he would in areas he invokes that nonsense, sound more scientific. It's
when they like to comment on social issues in fields other than directly
their own that this dialectic materialism and holism stuff comes out. I want to apologize to jm-bailey for attributing that quote to him. It
belongs to Murphree. I think Bailey and I have a similar opinion of
Lewontin's discussions of science and social issues in general. At the
same time he is a cracker-jack geneticist. As are Gould and Rose in their
own fields. I see that this particular thread is quite active so I would like to reask a
question I asked some time ago. What is the real recovery rate for
schizophrenia? As compared to the rule of thirds? What happens here is akin to stepping into a quagmire. The question must
first arise as to a definition of schizophrenia... how it is
operationalized for study, what criteria to use, etc. There is a whole
literature on this, and it will enlighten anyone who reads it, whether
it's Gottesman's _Schizophrenia Genesis_ or Lewontin, Rose and Kamin's
_Not in our Genes_. This was the very issue which demolished the famous
Danish studies, because Kety et. al. used DSM-II criteria which has since
been overturned in the field. Even Kety said we have to throw out the
result of all studies done before approx. 1980 because of faulty criteria
(and I will supply the quote for anyone who wants it -- it was in a paper
on schizotypal disorders). Oftentimes, the question of "recovery" from schizophrenia is a matter of
retrospective diagnosis. For instance, if a person has a schizophrenic
break but recovers in six months, then he/she has a schizophreniform
disorder (supposedly) and not schizophrenia. Werner Mendel characterized
schizophrenia as chronic illness with remissions tapering off over time.
But as he admits, the patient group in his study does not match the
patient group of other populations of patients with schizophrenia in the
literature. Manfred Bleuler also writes of schizophrenic populations and
did a 23 year longitudinal study of schizophrenics, and is considered an
expert in the long-term course of schizophrenic psychoses. You could
consult his writings. I seem to remember something about an absolute 20%
recovery rate, but I can't be sure.
Then there are the problems about teasing out the confounding effects of
hospitalization (cf. Goffman), institutionalization, severe accompanying
personality disorders, substance abuse, the side effects of toxic
medication, etc...... Perhaps Laing was right after all (or James Joyce,
who he was paraphrasing), and the current reality we live in is what we
hope to be cured from... (Joyce said awake from).
if a person diagnoses as schizophrenic recovers, then the diagnosis is
withdrawn: one of the qualifying criteria for schizophrenia is that it
is unrecoverable.
schizophrenia is relatively rare as such, but schizopherincs tend to
make about half of the clients in psychiatric institutions since it's so
diffucylt to deal with.
in the USA, the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia differ from those
in Europe, as an effect of this, reported recovery rates are higher there. Hey I want it. I think there is a gentleman from my forum on Delphi
diagnosed with PS who would like to see it. He relies on most of his
information from pre-1980 studies. His dx was pre-80's That 20% absolute was from a Finnish study around the early 60's I believe. Definately, those variables would make for a hard study.....at least one with
any chance of statistical validity. Thanks for all the name references! I don't think being a classical marxist is disreputable for people in
social sciences, just out of favor. I think that leewontin is a evolutionary
geneticist, which gives him alot of authority on matters of genetics which
most psychologist just don't have or won't bother to acquire. I respect Leewontin and Noam Chompsky because, unlike most scientist,
they do not live in the Ivory Tower all the time and are intellectually
tough and responsible enough to confront the boundary of science and
politics. I'm not saying that makes them better scientists, I'm saying
it makes them whole people, unlike many scientists who are basically, if
I may say so, politically naive.
I think Leewontin's claim that 200 years ago propertied men who justify
their position in life by reference to blood and God and now they
commanly justify their upper class position by their IQ scores and genetics
(another sort of providence-I believe in the original providence by the way)
is dead on. Lets face it, genetics and culture and politics are all mixed
together in the real world and will get more so as the human genome project
and the inherited human behavior people get more and more exited.
I don't buy into all of Leewontin's marxist analysis, though I think
dielectical materialism has something to contribute to the nature/nuture
debate. I think if you read NOT IN OUR GENES, you will find that
a) he believes there is good evidence for behavioral genetics in animals,
and he's not above the idea that there might be a genetic component for
madness. His point is not that there can't be positive evidence of
behavior genetics, just that the evidence up to now is rather shoddy.
We are all, in the middle 90's basking in the glow of the sucess of the
single gene single polypeptide theory of disease as evidenced by sickle
cell anemia. Everybody is willing to bet their bottom dollor madness and
whatever is just like that-a single bad receptor or neurotransmitter
metabolism defect. That may or may not be true, we don't know yet.
My bet is that most madness is simply a property of our identities and
potenitality as holders of the overall human genome. i.e. individual
differences in mental health cannot, by large, be attributed to genes,
except for the genes we all hold. Sickle Cell may be a misleading early
sucess for genetic disease. I think most people are mad to one degree
or another and about half or more of the population has been diagnosed
or diagnosable at one time. So its more plausible that everybody has
the potential for madness, which is realized in various environments.
well prolixity is putrid so I'll stop.
