Re: [xmca] epigenesis

Deborah,
   
  I'm going to check out the link you provided but I'm wondering if you know right off hand whether Mark Schuckit or anyone else has dealt with the tendency for alcoholism to skip a generation?
   
  Paul

deborah downing-wilson <ddowningw@gmail.com> wrote:
  Marc Schuckit at UCSD studies the mechanisms of inherited alcohol
dependence, collecting DNA and extensive lifestyle information on three
generations - Several decades of work. Fascinating stuff.

psychiatry.ucsd.edu/faculty/m*schuckit*.html

http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/U/urban_metaculture.html

Deb

On 10/27/07, Cathrene Connery wrote:
>
> Very interesting, Martin. Aside from PTSD, do you know of other
> conditions that might be inherited? What about alcoholism, bulimia,
> allergies, etc? This is an intriguing dialectic between biology and
> environment.
> Cathrene
>
> Martin Packer wrote:
> > Paul,
> >
> > The PBS documentary includes discussion of a retrospective analysis of
> data
> > over at least 3 generations in a relatively isolated Scandanavian
> community:
> > in particular, records of births and deaths (with cause of death) and
> annual
> > harvest yields. The focus of the documentary was not merely on the
> > epigenetic pathways of individual development (e.g. that genetically
> > identical twins diverge in their patterns of gene expression over the
> > years), which is a notion that's been around for a while, but on
> mechanisms
> > of *inheritance* of epigenetic pathways. So post-traumatic stress in one
> > generation may well be *inherited* by children and even grand-children.
> To
> > my knowledge this is a new idea, and one for which the mechanisms are
> now
> > being worked out (methylation of the DNA, I think).
> >
> > Martin
> >
> >
> > On 10/26/07 1:49 PM, "Paul Dillon"
wrote:
> >
> >
> >> I'm looking forward to learning mmore about the research in that field
> by
> >> definition it would seem to require a study that tracked three or more
> >> generations of families at both that genetic and socio-cultural levels
> which
> >> is 90 years for humans populations. That's long after I'll be
> following
> >> all of this. :)
> >>
> >> Paul
> >>
> >>
> >> Bruce Robinson
wrote:
> >>
> >> Paul Dillon wrote:
> >>
> >>> Jay,
> >>>
> >>> Any possible answer your question " . . . why is the model of
> >>> gene-determinism so appealing, almost a religion today, both among
> molecular
> >>> biologists and the lay public? Why has it been so easy for the media
> to
> >>> spread this gospel?"
> >>>
> >> I was pleasantly surprised to hear human genome mapper (and would be
> >> privatiser) Craig Venter dissociate himself from crude genetic
> >> determinism in an interview he gave to the BBC Today programme. He came
> >> out against the one to one 'a gene for...' idea, talked about the
> social
> >> environment of development interacting with genetic tendencies and
> being
> >> more important in a whole range of behaviour, as well as, in a comment
> >> on the Watson controversy, describing race as a social construct with
> no
> >> scientific basis. So there clearly are exceptions. But I do accept that
> >> genetic determinism is pervasive and think Jay is right to point to the
> >> resulting fatalism about social inequality as a cause, perhaps less as
> >> an excuse for people to do nothing and more as a justification of why
> >> things are the way they are in the first place. This is not new - Marx
> >> pointed to Darwin's drawing on Malthus and his picture of nature
> >> reflecting the model of competitive capitalism.
> >>
> >> Bruce R
> >>
> >>> would seem to require an adequate theory of why any "knowledge
> >>> system/ideology" is dominant in a given society at a given time. From
> the
> >>> perspective of the classic Marxist model, i.e., "dominance of the
> ideas of
> >>> the dominant economic forces" , the dominance of the genetic metaphor
> in
> >>> contemporary capitalist societies seems to provide a text book case.
> The
> >>> primary client for the products of the bio-technology and
> pharmaceutical
> >>> industries in which most geneticists is the health care industry (15%
> of US
> >>> GDP) , then there's the GMO dominance in capitalist agriculture. Along
> with
> >>> cybenetics , genetic technologies , suffuse the fabric of modern
> economic
> >>> activity.
> >>>
> >>> But that's only a formal cause and although probably a necessary
> condition
> >>> for the ideological dominance of some branch of knowledge, still
> insufficient
> >>> to answer your question. I think one of the effective causes at the
> >>> psychological level , might have to do with the utopian futures
> genetics
> >>> provides the "cult of eternal youth" , likewsie a root metaphor of
> popular
> >>> consumer culture. The promised developments of genetic technologies
> certainly
> >>> have that Utopian dimension, better futures quality that makes of good
> >>> ideology.
> >>>
> >>> Paul
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
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>
> --
> Dr. M. Cathrene Connery
> Assistant Professor of Education
> 607.274.7382
> Ithaca College
>
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-- 
Deborah Downing Wilson
Laboratory for Comparative Human Cognition
University of California San Diego
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