If mental illness gene found will it lead to more abortions?

Meanwhile, more than 80 candidate genes for alcoholism have been identified—in the fruit fly. Likewise, hundreds of genes have been "implicated" in schizophrenia (the database at http://www.szgene.org currently contains 8,788 polymorphisms pertaining to 1,008 genes). But we are no closer to having reliable genetic markers for schizophrenia (much less depression) than we were in the 1930s, when the "feeble minded" were compulsorily sterilized (not just in Nazi Germany but in the U.S. and most western countries) to keep their inferior genes from propagating.


Read More At >> Mental Illness: It's Not in Your Genes http://bigthink.com/devil-in-the-data/mental-illness-its-not-in-your-genes

-- Thu Feb 18, 2016 3:50 am --

So IF they actually ever prove mental illness is genetic and come up with a test what are they going to do with it ? Do we use genetic testing on parents and unborn children and then do abortions on "defectives" ?

What is the plan ?

Eighty genes isn't many. You can't expect one to be responsible. It's a complex relationship between "candidate genes".

People are already making these sorts of decisions about congenital conditions. You can fertalise a bunch of eggs in a lab and screen them to see which ones you want to use if you don't want the kid to have the condition. They're only bothered about people wanting "designer babies" because they don't want to be total nazis trying to create a master race but if you have a congenital condition it might stop you from having kids at all or you have the guilt of passing it on.

Anyway, they don't have to put them in the womb before they test them if they can identify the genes, so abortion doesn't really come into it unless it's unplanned or you won't or can't do it through IVF.

At the end of the day, it's a personal decision and if you don't see it as a curse you won't abort but I've got a bit of a problem with people like that trying to impose their values on other people. I mean, there's actually a "deaf community" and a lot of them won't have surgery done on their kids so that they won't be deaf as well. But if you're born deaf you might not want to be different than you are and it's just normality for you and you might not even consider it to be a problem. Who would want to go insane? I mean, anyone can anyway if they just put the right drugs into their system but that's choice and you've got some control over it.

If psychiatry wishes to advance a eugenics agenda (assuming they dont have on already) they will make something up. The fact researchers still cant pinpoint point specific genes in the role of mental illness only backs up anti-psychiatry.


I am a firm believer environment plays a huge role but that its scrubbed from psychiatric literature. After all, why not withhold what can trigger these genes. Every triggered gene or case of mental illness is $$$$.

There was schizophrenia in David Bowie's family and his brother had it but Bowie said that he suspected that it had more to do with crap that went on in his family.

I don't read much psychiatric literature but I think that with personality disorders at least there's a lot been written on childhood development of the disorders due to parenting styles, bullying and so on. That's psychology though. I know a psychology professor that's done a lot of important work studying autistic children.

I did read a book written by a psychiatrist recently looking for the sort of thing that you're talking about but there was just so much judgmental horseshit that it seemed to go from describing some symptoms that do sound like a genuine mental illness to applying the concepts to all sorts of things that people do, so now I'm not just chasing younger women because I'm having a midlife crisis but it's part of the pathology of a personality disorder. But he wasn't really saying that maybe and he was talking about traits that people do have but can become genuine impediments. Also, a lot of his patients were homosexual men but the book wasn't supposed to be a study of homosexuality and it was just that the dude was a Freudian and saw everything in those terms, which are about relationships between parents and children effecting their development but a lot of people call that pseudoscience because it's just a theory and they don't consider it a scientific theory unless it could be refuted scientifically. You could fairly easily diagnose somebody with an inferiority complex but someone with an Oedepus complex probably won't admit to wanting to have sex with his mother and to kill his father because it's psychoanalytic mythology and all buried in the unconcious anyway.

I don't know if there really is such a thing as human nature but biology and genetics do seem to play some part in making up a person's identity or personality. There probably is such a thing as being born with a talent and if you've not got it you never will. Some kids and adults for that matter go through abuse and other horrific experiences and don't end up being mentally disturbed by it, so probably there are people that are stronger than others in that respect but you could still argue that one makes a decision not to let something ruin their life or they don't and that there is such a thing as free will.

I think that they are making important breakthroughs now with genetics and new technology for studying the brain but it's only really starting to give up its secrets and a lot of the old theories about brain abnormalities and how they cause mental illnesses could be wrong. There is plenty of evidence to show that brain damage can make a person act like they are mentally ill in some way. People with brain damage can have their perception of the world distorted and they can lose inhibitions and their sense of morality.

I agree. Children mimic their parents, as well as being effected by their behavior. So who is to say its all genetic when environment plays just as big a role? The beauty about the genetic model is that it supports the chemical imbalance theory which in turns props up psychotropic management of mental disorders.