Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

eglamkowski writes "Researchers Discover Gene That Controls Ability To Learn Fear. The poor, misguided scientists say this will enable them to treat people who suffer from anxiety, panic disorders or depression(??). Of course, it also means an evil, despotic country that is cloning humans for its army can make its soldiers completely fearless, eliminating one source of possible defeat on the battlefield (breaking of morale). (Why does there seem to be no cynical scientists? ;-)"

Comments

Then again, no one ever said...

[twilight30]

That editors were the sharpest tools in the box.

Fear serves a number of useful roles, not least the one of self-preservation. What's that old saw about discretion being the better part of valour?

I can think of two reasons why this is just BS on the part of the editors (well, many others too, but let's leave that for now). Let's take as a starting point that the leap is valid.

Possible follow-on points:
1. 'Emotional intelligence' seems to play a role in most people's rationality (no, I'm not going to dig up the reference to the EQ book; that's for a Google / Amazon search) and intelligence generally.
2. Removing fear could possibly remove a certain level of rational appreciation of things ie/ the need to keep oneself intact.
3. This would be tantamount to partially lobotomising one's own army. Would any country want to do this?

No, they can make soldiers who are always afraid

[sam_handelman]

My fine colleagues at the hhmi (look to my e-amil address) have discovered a gene that REPRESSES the fear response.

In general, the thing you can do with that knowledge is to REMOVE the genes effect; it is far more difficult to enhance the gene. Overexpressing the gene (so that it was always on) would almost-certainly produce nasty brain defects.

"When we compared the mouse strains, we saw a powerful enhancement of learned fear in the knockout mice,"

Emphasis added.

Once they understand WHAT IT IS THAT THE GENE INHIBITS, then they may be able to make some fearless mice.

Silly scientists

[Hubert_Shrump]

Look, the studies have been done, and everyone knows that this is infeasable. As the fear level drops, the urge to eat brains increases at an alarming rate.

As Napoleon said, "An army marches on its stomach", and there is just not enough brains in the world to have a whole zombie army.