Childhood Stress Leaves Genetic Scars 334
sciencehabit writes "Traumatic experiences in early life can leave emotional scars. But a new study suggests that violence in childhood may leave a genetic mark as well. Researchers have found that children who are physically abused and bullied tend to have shorter telomeres — structures at the tips of chromosomes whose shrinkage has been linked to aging and disease."
A Candidate for Genetic Theropy? (Score:3)
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Longer telomeres would increase the risk of getting cancer at an earlier age.
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longer the 'normal' yes? but what about telomeres that have been artificially shortened? Can the be returned to normal.
That's the question.
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No, we should reward them with cancer.
Re:A Candidate for Genetic Theropy? (Score:4, Informative)
The ideal therapy would involve determining the probability of a dangerous mutation then resizing all the telomeres accordingly. You don't want excessively long telomeres (it's an intentional self-destruct mechanism for preventing a cell damaged over time from becoming malignant) just as you don't want telomeres being too short.
Cancer cells are not necessarily ones with over-long telomeres - typically what happens is that the cell's mechanism for shortening the telomeres breaks so that the cell can replicate forever. That doesn't, however, mean that it will or that the replication will occur in a timeframe that's of any significance. You'd have to have additional damage to cell mechanisms for that. If you can modify telomere length on-the-fly, the easiest one is to shorten all the telomeres in a person to something that'll only allow a few copies, then close to the deadline lengthen them just a little. That way, if a cell goes nuts and replicates excessively prior to the telomere system breaking, it'll suicide before it reaches the point of being able to replicate forever.
A better option, though considerably further into the future, would be to modify the repair mechanism in DNA to be rather more reliable. The better-able DNA is at fixing damage, the longer you can make the telomeres without it causing harm. As it stands, the mechanism has limited value. So much so that mtDNA has no such mechanism at all and can handle such a state just fine.
Of course, it helps that mitochondrial DNA is much shorter. The current nucleic DNA is a combination of the original nucleic DNA plus a lot of DNA from symbiotic organisms that became part of the cell and eventually became part of the nucleus, PLUS a great many retroviruses. Perhaps 8-10% of nucleic DNA is from fossil viruses (some still active) and according to recent studies perhaps another 40% is from other external sources.
It aught to be possible to take a fully-sequenced (and I MEAN fully-sequenced) human genome and optimize it. There'll be plenty of genes that belong to fossil lifeforms that serve no useful purpose as far as the human host and the microflora within the host are concerned. (That's over 5,500 lifeforms, so you've got to be very sure of these things.) Decrufting and compacting the human genome would likely reduce the risk of dangerous mutations. It may be that replacing the central DNA core with an XNA core would also help, but I saw nothing in that article about whether XNA molecules have the capacity to unwind properly and replicate, only that XNA had been constructed and was able to carry the same base pairs. This solution is in the FAR future (Star Trek timeframe at best) but there's nothing there that breaks any known rule. We can already do some of the steps, the main reason I'm putting it 500+ years in the future is that the problem space grows exponentially with the number of genes and even quantum computers aren't going to have sufficient power to handle a space that large for a very very long time. If ever. GM is unpredictable enough when adding/deleting single genes, but compacting DNA would involve wholesale rewrites of the genetic code.
On a related note... (Score:5, Informative)
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We've known for a long time that subordinate monkeys have worse health and live shorter lives in general than dominant monkeys, but this is one of the first studies that describe how this actually happens, genetically and physiologically.
In human societies, we've known about this since the Industrial Revolution. -_- It's hardly a shocking finding that when you get the crap kicked out of you and live in constant fear, under stress, and working hard, you die sooner.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:On a related note... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have so much stress these last 5 years that I've about had breakdown (life, economy, working long hours to keep my job..ect). I don't drink, smoke, or do anything physically abusive. But I feel like I've aged 10 years.
Have you ever thought about indulging yourself a little and having a beer once in a while, just to take the edge off a little? Too much of anything is bad, of course, by definition, but a little can go a long way. I've long had the suspicion that people in cultures where alcohol is completely prohibited tend to get too worked up over small and unimportant things. I also treasure the evenings where my friends and I drink a little more than we should; we get to collectively step out of our normal controlled selves for a while, bond, and do stupid, childish stuff. In an utterly unscientific way, I suspect that whatever harm the alcohol does to our bodies will be offset by the fun we have. And even if our bodies are harmed a little, and our lives shortened a little, at least we had fun.
Just my 2 cents.
Re:On a related note... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's likely related. Telomeres don't shorten on their own. One (of several) environmentally-controlled systems in the cells is the epigenome - a string of proteins that controls how DNA is interpreted. It may well be that emotional stress alters the epigenome in areas affecting the immune system and telomeres.
(There's some evidence that highly stressed adult humans are also more susceptible to cancer, and cancer again is linked to both the immune system and the telomere system.)
I think we're going to find that a number of things we've taken for granted as the "right way" for a society to function will prove to be carcinogenic and/or physically toxic. It will be interesting to see if that results in societies changing or whether they deem subjecting carcinogens and toxins on others to be a fundamental freedom (or that people are expendable anyway, or that the science isn't agreed on by 107.3% of all toothpick manufacturers, etc).
Re:On a related note... (Score:4, Interesting)
Telomeres don't shorten on their own, as you say. The traditional understanding is that they shorten when DNA replicates itself. Cell splits into two copies and the copies have shorter telomeres, limiting the number of times they can reproduce. Applying Ockham's Razor, it seems that the simplest explanation for two otherwise similar individuals of similar ages to have differing telomere lengths is that the individual with the shorter telomeres has experienced more cell death over their lifetime, so more of their cells are replacements. That can be explained by exposure to drugs or alcohol in the womb, poor nutrition, heightened stress levels causing cell death through various mechanisms, as well as plain old physical trauma. Given that explanation of how growing up in an abusive home could lead to shorter telomeres, is another explanation necessary? Does there have to be some special mechanism shortening telomeres to explain the results of this study, or does the traditional explanation that telomeres shorten with every cell division cover it?
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Stress is an objective biological state that can be measured so it doesn't matter whether or not a particular culture endorses a certain behavior or not. Treatment that causes stress hormones to increase is stressful regardless of what their culture has to say about the desirability of said behavior.
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I'm saying that because I haven't seen evidence that the field of anthropology is particularly diligent about correcting errors as soon as they are discovered it raises the bar in terms of the burden of proof for what I will consider credible.
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...the high ranking males mounting the lower ranking males.
And people say gay sex isn't natural why again?
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interkin3tic's post seems like an example of sex-related behavior that's about something besides the sex.
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And people say gay sex isn't natural why again?
The same high ranking male can utilize beating with a stick, hitting with a stone, biting, throwing off the tree, chasing away from food... all these things are natural, but it doesn't mean that they are socially progressive or good for you. They are all punishments.
Not surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
It's already known that stress can seem to accelerate aging. Ever see those pictures of presidents before a term, then after? 4 years passed for everybody else, but it looks like they aged 10 years.
Psyche and soma are not fully distinguishable.
Ridiculous! (Score:2)
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Actually, it was pretty good science.
More study recommended? of course. I can't find anything in their methodological the would be bad. What did you find?
What's that, you haven't read the study? ah, STFU.
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Study fails to prove anything - bad headline (Score:2)
Also, with a bit of work I bet they could find something else the test subjects had in common and thus be cl
So everything they taught in school is wrong? (Score:2)
Remember when they used to teach that humans exhale co2, inhale oxygen? And plants "inhale" CO2, and release oxygen? Turns out they take in oxygen [google.com], too.
It used to be taught that environmental factors during an organism's lifetime (malnutrition, etc.) did not have an effect on the genetic heritage of offspring (you get a "clean slate" of DNA, so to speak). The opposing idea, that, e.g., giraffes are tall because their ancestors had to reach up to the tall leaves, and then they had long-necked kid giraffes wa
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Is this the first time you've heard of epigenetics?
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Quite possibly so (it's not my field). Care to share?
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Very basic science lecture Vol MMCXCIV: (Score:4, Informative)
It used to be taught that environmental factors during an organism's lifetime (malnutrition, etc.) did not have an effect on the genetic heritage of offspring (you get a "clean slate" of DNA, so to speak). [...] But here we are with a study that says environmental factors can leave a genetic mark.
The study was about somatic cells, eg "body cells" that make up the specialized tissues of your body. Your offspring are formed from germ cells, found in your gonads, and consequently your offspring can only inherit DNA from your germ cells, but never your somatic cells (except in the case of cloning or other artificial techniques).
Telomeres are the "endcaps" of chromosomal DNA. Every time a chromosome is copied, a small portion at the ends of the chromosome get "left off" of the copy, which limits the number of time a cell can divide before the telomeres are consumed and functional DNA segments begin to be deleted. This (usually) prevents cells from reproducing in an uncontrolled fashion, and it's one of your body's main defenses against cancer. That's how it works in somatic cells.
Germ cells, on the other hand, can express a ribozyme called "telomerase," which can bind to the ends of a chromosome and extend the telomeres. This is why animals can reproduce indefinitely even though 99% of their cells are "mortal." (As others have pointed out, when a somatic cell begins to express telomerase it's usually cancer.)
The upshot of all of this is that shortened telomeres in your somatic cells will have no direct effect on your offspring. This particular study in no way supports the idea that environmental factors are responsible for genetic changes in offspring. Your post is therefore ill-informed even if your thesis is correct ("almost everything they teach in American public school is either wrong or simplified to the point of uselessness?").
To rectify your error, your homework assignment for tonight is to study the enzymes called "telomerase" and "reverse transcriptase," followed by learning the "central dogma of biology."
Dismissed.
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Hey, there's a reason this guy is the Emperor. Thanks!
the problem (Score:2)
what doesn't kill 'em makes 'em weaker.
I think they have the cause/effect backwards (Score:2)
I think they have the cause and effect backwards. It is not that abuse causes short telomeres, rather, the short telomeres cause abuse. No, really. Most child abuse is from family members ... who also have the short telomeres in most of these cases. Short telomeres also make people bad and turn them into abusers, bank robbers, and even spammers. And I think Anonymous Coward has short telomeres, too.
Re:More evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:More evidence (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, if you RTFA you would know that the measurement only applied to two or more kinds of violence exposure. Thus, the occasional spanking without other forms of violence would not qualify as harmful under this study.
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Re:More evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
You're kidding, right? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parents need to learn there are other ways to handle discipline and yes, aside from being damaging in yet another known way - previous revelations including lower test scores and greater aggression from children who have been spanked, spanking is the lazy way out. There are more effective, responsible means.
Timeouts for one, if done right and that is key, if done right, are absolutely better. Parents screw this one up by making them too long or delaying them. I for one always found a minute per year of age, given immediately at the time of the infraction regardless of where we were, done standing, done silent and done facing a wall, corner, tree, whatever was handy and followed with an explanation for the punishment and a directive for future behavior was very effective. So effective in fact I would find no need for their use within a couple weeks time. I had compliance.
Now I'll admit these weren't my children - rather I was a nanny for a great many years, and parents tend to have to be around their children a bit more than I had to, so perhaps adjustments would be necessary to maintain effectiveness. Or other avenues explored. My point is simply that there are other ways and they can be much more effective, if done right.
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Not the point. (Score:2, Interesting)
I have a brain and put to its full use, I can't for the life of me figure out how the liberal bogeyman came into this for you, but I'm sorry to tell you that your reasoning is inherently flawed. First off, I have found that people of all political stripes are more than willing to take a study, apply it universally and try to force it on everyone.
I did not, in any way, suggest that timeouts would work for everyone. What I did find was that for the thirty or so children I cared for as the eldest of three, the
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if your father had instituted the timeout immediately after the infraction - without delay, had been standing behind you, keeping your head facing the wall, keeping you silent, and gave not before or during but after an explanation for the punishment, and then a directive for future behavior
I think one of the key points is "standing behind you". Most parents I have seen using "time outs" IGNORE the child for the duration, often even leaving the room, rather than standing with them. It's a dismissive gesture, and in my experience totally invalidates the punishment. Parents often use time-outs to calm themselves down, and while this is admirable, it is a sign the parent lacks the self-control to be in charge of another human life.
Re:More evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More evidence (Score:5, Funny)
I doubt anyone wants to have a jerk for a son.
I disagree; I'm sure countless Americans would want that. Everyone wants kids that grow up to be just like themselves.
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There's definitely too many adults ready to substitute violence for parenting, but the opposite extreme of a complete ban on spanking doesn't work well either. Let's face it, there are adults out there who you can't get through to without a little force.
Re:More evidence (Score:4, Insightful)
Parents, in the mini society we call the family, perform the role of government. If we, as adults, do things like use violence and intimidation to get our way we will find the police using state sanctioned violence against us. I personally think smacking is an appropriate response to violent, bullying behavior in children and most kids will try that out at some stage. It is better for society that we learn this lesson at the hands of our parents as children rather than at the hands of police as an adult. I do note that it isn't the only method I'd recommend to correct bullying.
Additionally, sometimes behavior correction needs to be immediate. Where disobedience will lead to the child's life being in danger taking "the time needed to solve the situation otherwise" could be interpreted as neglect. If you are in a situation where you need to correct behavior right now, smacking could be the best option.
The Three Bears of Punishment (Score:4, Informative)
Mama Bear: To those parents that are completely anti-spanking... hey, good luck with that. Technically, a timeout is a short period of solitary confinement, which itself deemed torture, cruel, and unusual... So before you go overboard and compare a measured spanking to beating a child... just remember, you still torture them with solitary confinement, so what makes you parent of the year, eh? ;) I'm sure a few of these velvet glovers will turn out wonderful kids. I'm also sure they will put their child so high on a pedestal to scar their unique little snowflakes in worse ways.
Papa Bear: On the other hand, if a parent ever has to hit, leave a mark, turn something red, or use something other than the palm of their own hand, they're going to far. To that kind of parent: You are bigger, stronger, and in control. For you to use a hanger, belt, stick, wooden spoon, knuckes or other hard part of the body, or anything else on a child is abuse! You're beating your child to quench your anger, not teach a lesson.
Baby Bear: Appropriate measure and balance. My son will be 4 this summer. I'm adamant about teaching him not to grab from the counter, but let's say he goes to grab a knife. I will slap the back of his hand or his bottom (after taking the knife from him calmly, of course). This isn't time to "negotiate". My son permanently injuring himself will receive a swift sting somewhere. He's a small child. He's smart, but appealing to his intellect is completely wrong when it comes to immediate danger. He doesn't run into traffic in a parking lot. He doesn't grab at the stove. He doesn't put coins in his mouth. The key is being consistent, and rare. I think the more you spank, and the harder you spank, work against you. I don't want my child resenting me, or thinking I'm out to hurt him. If he does, then I've failed. But if he gets hit by a car, I've definitely failed!
Very rarely do I ever have to spank for another reason, and that's usually if he refuses to stand in timeout. It's measured, not harsh (I am rougher when he and I are rough housing and playing... so its more embarrassing than anything), and I give him lots of warnings. If I say what the consequence will be, I always follow up. Parents that threaten punishment, and don't follow through do their kids a huge injustice just as if they continually promised ice cream for dessert, and never deliver on that either. Parents that punish without explanation are causing more problems than if they did nothing.
Any form of punishment is followed by having him explain what he did that caused the punishment ("I got a time out because I didn't listen when you told me to put up my toys."), followed by me adding explanations for why what he did was wrong, followed by a big hug, wiping of any tears, a kiss on the cheek, and telling him to go up to anyone he was bad to and apologize.
My son, is healthy, happy, knows he's loved, and is a very sweet and polite boy. He's not mean to animals or other kids. Most of the time, I've found talking quietly and firmly to my son ends all that tantrum business while shopping.
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Yes, it can be.
That does not mean in necessarily is.
Your post could be read to mean you're a moron, but does not necessarily mean you're a moron. See the difference?
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I'm going to tell you boys and girls a story, and it's posted AC for the obvious reason (other than having lost my user/pass to a hard drive crash).
One of my mother's boyfriends used to smash my head into my brother's head, then he'd drag me off to my room by my head. On the way, he'd smash my head into the wall or a door, just for further punishment.
Just thinking about this makes me very, very angry. This same motherfucker also gave me ti
Re:More evidence (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed.
Don't put disinfectant on that scrape on your kid's knee, because it stings.
Don't take him in for surgery because there will be post-op pain--after all, the doctor abused him by cutting him open. How is this still legal, in this day and age?!
The examples above are cases in which the end justifies the means. I think that there are better ways to discipline most children than spanking, but equating a spanking given by a clearly responsible and loving parent with slapping a kid because he blocked your view of the television is incredibly simplistic. There is an argument to be had about whether or not spanking can be categorized with my examples above, and it's one I'm interested in, but your position is untenable.
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Nice straw man. I knew I would receive opposition to my view, but I didn't think it would almost universally of the kind where people intentionally misrepresented my intentions. Did I really need to add "as punishment" considering the nature of the article, the other comments, common sense, and the person I replied to before people understood my intent?
I'm curious about how spanking could be classified in the same area in the examples you give. Both situations could lead to issues up to and including death
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Re:More evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More evidence (Score:5, Funny)
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That doesn't at all address the parent, you're just changing the subject.
Yes, there is a difference between spanking and beating the crap out of a kid. There's also a difference between beating the crap out of a kid and quadruple-amputating him for no sound medical reason, but that doesn't make beating the crap out of a kid okay.
Rather than speak to differences between thing X and an obviously worse thing Y, you should clarify why thing X is not a bad thing on its own merits.
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Why would you hit an adult who's making no sense? Or a child?
Spanking and other forms of punishment are to negatively reinforce bad behavior, not to deal with someone who's upset and irrational. And yes, we absolutely do hit adults when they behave badly. Well, most of us don't, but the police certainly do. They hit them, with metal batons if necessary, until they comply, and then they're taken to jail. Luckily, most adults don't need this, and most kids raised correctly probably don't either, but ther
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Here's one [pediatricsdigest.mobi]. You can find other studies that have found even higher frequencies than this one if you keep looking.
Yes, and it has very powerful long term effects [fdrurl.com] on their personality.
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Which is what? Society has failed to collapse in spite of widespread use of spankings? I'd like to see data on whether successful people were or were not spanked in childhood. Whether or not it's traumatizing to a child is more or less irrelevant if that trauma shapes them into responsible adults IMO, especially when "trauma" is defined so broadly that it encompasses any negative association with a behavior. The whole point is to modify behavior. I'll concede that spanking is likely overused, and that
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You could answer that question if you watched the video series I linked in my original post.
If you want more historical context for the effects that different ways of treating children has on entire civilizations you could take a look at this book [psychohistory.com].
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Re:More evidence (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry, but that opinion is not healthy. Abuse is abuse, but on occasion a parent (assuming they are actually parenting) will have limits tested beyond any other punishment. Normally, I see your type of comment from one of two kinds of people.
1. Those that have no children so have no idea what parenting is.
2. Parents who's children are monsters that have no respect for any authority. Generally the parents are either ashamed or afraid to take the kids out in public, or the children are so poorly behaved that people don't want them in public.
Truth be told, I have spanked my son 2 times in his whole life. The first time he refused to stop what he was doing, refused any punishment (go to time out) and was doing something dangerous. The second time, he was a bit older. He refused punishment and took a swing at me.
Now unlike when I was a kid and just got the shit kicked out of me with a belt, I explained to my kid on both occasions why I had to punish him and how we could not repeat those mistakes. He learned valuable lessons on both occasions. In my opinion, he learned valuable lessons from those occasions. He is going to be an adult soon, and one day may ask for advice when it comes to parenting. I really hope he remembers how he was raised or talks to me before he talks to someone like you.
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Now unlike when I was a kid and just got the shit kicked out of me with a belt, I explained to my kid on both occasions why I had to punish him and how we could not repeat those mistakes. He learned valuable lessons on both occasions. In my opinion, he learned valuable lessons from those occasions. He is going to be an adult soon, and one day may ask for advice when it comes to parenting. I really hope he remembers how he was raised or talks to me before he talks to someone like you.
I'm sure you are a fair parent. However, you need to realize that you justified striking your child out of frustration with your inability to control him by effectively saying, "at least I wasn't as bad as my parent." In that statement, you condemned your parents' actions as abusive and affirmed that the lesson you learned from them was not to do what they did. What do you think your son is going to tell people when he emotionally abuses his kids? Or locks then in a basement room without food for days at a
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You interjected frustration on your own, I never stated that. Even in reflection, I would not state that it was frustration. Before I became a parent I read probably 50 books covering a lot of psychology as well as other aspects of parenting. Every single book mentions that children will test boundaries (it's how they learn and grow), and every single book said pretty much the same thing.
There are really two choices when children test the boundaries and ignore authority. 1. Be the person that says "Sto
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[Citation needed], because I think you're just making stuff up.
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I've never spanked my child nor would I as a trained psychologist ever suggest that someone should do so. That your child is avoiding punishments means that he is unable to understand what he did was 'wrong' or that your punishment was something he perceives as unjust.
What if the child is a borderline sociopath, and simply doesn't care if what he did was wrong? Since about 5-10% of the population is sociopaths, a lot of parents will have to deal with kids like that.
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Nothing, they're born that way, just like some people are born with various other mental problems.
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What, are you saying that sociopathy is environmentally-caused and not genetic? Sure, I'd like to see anything about that. However, I've seen too many examples of kids where a family has 2 or 3 kids or more, all of them grow up to be nice, well-adjusted people, but one is a big fuck-up. You can't blame that on parenting in most cases, because it's generally safe to assume they raised all the kids the same way. The simple fact is that siblings can have amazingly different personalities, and that probably
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There are genetic factors that make a child less resilient to mistreatment but the mistreatment is necessary to form a sociopath. That can be demonstrated with twin studies [neurologic...elates.com].
I've seen many examples of people who call themselves
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(as defined by the PARENT, not the GOVERNMENT)
You say this as if government intervention is always a bad thing. However, the government does intervene at times. Such as in situations of child abuse (and I'm not talking about spanking here). A parent cannot legally do whatever they want to their child. There are limits.
As clearly your child is somehow disabled if it cannot withstand corrective negative stimuli rewards for negative behaviors.
Just like my girlfriend! I slapped her a few times as punishment for disagreeing with me, and she had the audacity to press charges!
Using force will never make your arguments more correct. If you punch everyone who says that 1 + 1 is anyt
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We don't take the child abuse from child services very seriously. Taking a child out of a good family for no good reason and stuffing them into a foster home is very traumatic.
When children are orphaned or must be removed from the home, splitting up siblings is very traumatic as well. Claims of "we TRY to keep them together but it's hard" are little better than "We TRY to feed them every other day or so but it's hard". If CPS were a family, CPS would take the children away.
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I agree with that. In typical government fashion CPS agencies tend to make any problem they claim to solve even worse.
What I'm talking about though is the fact that even today in 2012 it's hard to get a majority of adults in the US to agree that hitting a 12 month old infant is unambiguously wrong.
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And how often do they really take children out of "good families"? I've had some contact with CPS here in Arizona (my wife used to volunteer at group homes), and the kids there were taken away from their families for very good reasons: abuse, neglect, etc. Being around some of those kids should convince anyone that some people really should be forcibly sterilized, so they can't create and abuse more children. Being in a group home isn't great at all, but it's better than being in an abusive home. If mor
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I don't think there's ever going to be a solution to the problem that comes from the government just due to their nature. Bureaucracies have an incentive to manage problems in perpetuity, not solve them.
The solution will happen when individual people stop turning a blind eye and stop making excuses for abusive conduct. The extent to which parents who abuse children can hide behind tradition, religion, law and culture to justify what they do is also the extent to which they avoid suffering negative social ra
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yes, adult on child abuse is taken seriously, to witch hunt levels sometimes. I figure Wonko the Sane meant abusive behavior between children.
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"Here in the states, child services can take your kid away from you if you so much as look at it wrong in public."
Not back in the 80s, in Texas.
I'll give you two guesses as to how I know. Hint: I'm 30 now.
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Child abuse isn't taken seriously? Here in the states, child services can take your kid away from you if you so much as look at it wrong in public.
Yeah, and then sometimes they ignore children being raped & beaten until there's a body and a new story. Underfunded, under-trained, over-worked--kind of tells its own story about the priority we put on it.
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Parental child abuse is taken seriously, but bullying isn't.
Re:More evidence (Score:5, Interesting)
Unless it happens on school grounds. Then people turn a blind eye.
Especially if other kids are doing it. Then the school administration gives their silent consent by doing nothing about it. Or worse, when it's physical abuse, they punish both the bully who attacked someone without provocation and the one who defended himself, just to add that element of mindfuck to existing injustice.
I am thankful to have had parents who told me I would not be in trouble for legitimate self-defense even if the school system was far less reasonable. What I found was that if you knock out one of them, the rest tend to leave you alone, for the nature of a bully is to find a doormat who will not fight back. I believe the school officials who have no doubt studied child psychology and the like are also aware of this and understand the injustice they facilitate. It is not mere bureaucratic ignorance but some kind of desired effect, a sort of unwritten portion of the curriculum.
People who can and will stand up for themselves, even when a price must be paid, are extremely undesirable to increasingly tyrannical governments. It's something they would discourage and it is not difficult to understand why. It's amazing how hard that is to accept for people who cannot comprehend that organizations, like individuals, can also be selfish and encourage only what is in their long-term interests.
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yeah, at least let the bullied fight back (as long as it doesn't get to the point of death or major physical injury)
maybe disdain for the weak is part of disdain for anti-bullying efforts; this would show who the weak one really is.
Re:Why would a school support tyrannical governmen (Score:4, Interesting)
Forget the organizational level for a second, and consider on a human level. Officials working for schools and depend on them to put food on the table would have to understand that authoritarian regimes tend to target and eliminate education.
Target and eliminate? No. They aren't that stupid (would that they were). What they do is pervert education and use it for the purpose of social engineering and indoctrination. Any transmission of knowledge or understanding is incidental and only to the extent necessary that the peons/students can perform useful labor, to form the bottom of the pyramid. They would also encourage conformity and permit various bullying and other abuses to ensure that the immaturities of childhood extend well into adulthood. What they absolutely would not do is teach serious, tough-minded critical thinking skills and raise up people who can educate themselves and do not need to depend on an instructor to tell them what is important to learn.
Sounds just like what we have now in the USA. These things happen slowly from the perspective of a human life, but quickly from the perspective of written history. Just consider how much the USA has changed in the last three generations. Then you can get a feel for what's going on, where it is headed, what the ultimate expression of it would be, and why it would be done that way.
The USA's tyranny is not going to be hard tyranny, the kind that waves a gun in your face and demands that you submit. It is going to be a soft tyranny, the kind that knows what's best for you, that you have learned to depend on. That, however, is just a matter of style, the means. The result is the same.
I have to ask, were you trolling or did you truly not understand that? What real tyrants understand is that the average person is so caught up in their day-to-day affairs that they tend not to be long-term thinkers. They are not skilled at seeing the path something is taking and projecting what the end of that path will be and that skill is not taught to them and they are not self-educators who would acquire it on their own. So if you want to implement tyranny, you do it in baby steps, each one carefully justified and defended by its ardent little apologists. After all, you don't want the terrorists to win, do you? After all, you want to protect the children, don't you? After all, you want the poor to be taken care of, don't you?
Re:An unjust attack. (Score:4, Insightful)
Historically, authoritarian regimes - the hard sort, have targeted education for elimination - perhaps not for the entire population, but large portions. The most glaring example would be Mao's China - but that really wasn't my reference.
Any others?
The USSR had great educational systems; they taught people to be physicists, rocket engineers, classical musicians, gymnasts, etc. No, they didn't teach people to be independent thinkers, but they poured lots of resources into higher education that benefited the state.
North Korea is about as authoritarian as they come, and they certainly are working hard to produce scientists and engineers to build them bombs and rockets.
Nazi Germany was certainly authoritarian, yet they had higher education too. How do you think they produced so many aeronautical engineers and rocket scientists?
Mao's China was really an exception, as Mao was a very stupid man who was basically an anti-intellectual farm worker who led a revolution and then forced his idiotic ideas on everyone, which led to the "Great Leap Forward" which was really a great leap backwards and resulted in countless people starving to death. He wanted to get rid of all "intellectuals" (anyone with an education) and basically make it a country of uneducated workers. China suffered greatly under his leadership, and only got better once other people took over. China's current leaders only pay lip service to Mao, and don't follow his methods at all; most of them are actually engineers.
Education is very important to authoritarian regimes, because it allows them to impose a particular school of thought on the entire population from the top down.
Funding is being cut on all levels, class sizes are going up, teachers and the very concept of education are being regularly attacked by politicians, religious types, etc.
The religious types aren't authoritarians; they hate public education because, at least these days, it prevents them from indoctrinating everyone else's kids with their religious beliefs, so they're always working against it. If this weren't a pluralistic society, this wouldn't be the case. Go to any religious schools and see if the concept of education is being attacked there; it isn't, because the religious people have complete control over the instruction(/indoctrination).
Furthermore, the attacks on educational funding in this country aren't evidence of creeping authoritarianism; they're evidence that there's many different forces at work, and this one is working against centralized authoritarianism. What's going on in this country is really rather complicated; it's not like other nations' revolutionary times where some jerks rose up and seized power militarily and then started imposing their ideas on everyone, as seen in the early Soviet Union, Mao's China, Castro's Cuba, Hitler's Germany, Napoleon's France, etc. One way you can see this is that there's no one person or small cabal in power at this time; Obama has a high office, but he's shown he isn't pulling any strings, but rather he's the puppet with his strings being pulled by various other interests. Furthermore, there's still a big division in power between the state and federal governments, with a lot of states openly challenging the federal government on various issues. If you want to boil things down, the main thing you can say is that the governments in this country (and more so at higher levels) are extremely corrupted by corporate influence. There's no single leader who's going to seize power like Stalin or Hitler or Napoleon; instead, various interests are going to be constantly fighting each other until the whole house of cards collapses.
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Ever since the 1960s, child abuse has been touted as the worst thing an individual could do to another individual--it's pretty high up there in America. I was under the impression it was being taken seriously.
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It's interesting that you choose to use the loaded terms "acceptable to hit infants," when "hit" includes slapping the child's hand in that study, and in order for it to support your coupling of "majority" and "infant" requires quite a stretch on what age constitutes infancy. Most people don't consider a 3-year-old an infant any longer, and the largest contingent of physical punishment used to make up that majority is slapping a child's hand. Your previous posts about hitting children at the age of 12 month
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um.. child abuse is the other terrorism here in the states.. there's a molester/abuser around every corner, to hear authority speak about it, and DCF can take your kid away with the most, beneign, taken out of context, 'judgments' about your behavior. meanwhile, in school bullying situations, if the bullies are the kids that make the school look good (overachiever 'preps', football jocks whatever), schools look the other way, or worse, punish both parties equally just to cover their sorry hides..worse, in
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I had gray hairs at 16.
But nothing about my lifestyle is good for longevity anyways.
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Someone is obviously too young to remember Columbine.
Re:Bully is the new overused buzzword (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone remebers what happened to them in the schoolyard, it's much harder to remeber what you did to others. It's neither an remedy or an excuse for this behaviour but I beleive the Stanford prison experiments clearly demonstrated what old time religion had intuitvely known about human nature from day one, how did 'middle class' germans willingly become death camp gaurds, and why are kids so cruel? - Stable, strong societies survive, the "golden rule" found in most societies and religions combined with resrtricing the definition of "others" is a powerful stabalizing force, war against non-others is a powerful strenghtening force.
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I agree with much of this, may have modded you up if I hadn't posted already.
yes, some people are overly dramatic about it.
Getting bullied seems like a nerd thing (that fits with your "slightly autistic", I suppose)
A lot of the media hype I see is about bullied LGBT's, another actual issue.
Yeah, it's bullshit when fighting back gets you in as much if not more trouble (if fighting back doesn't lead to death or major physical injury)