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Scientists Seek Biomarkers For Violence
An anonymous reader writes "A Newtown couple, both scientists, who lost their daughter in the school shooting, are wondering whether there were clues in the shooter's physiological makeup — his DNA, his blood, his brain chemistry. They are now involved in a search for biomarkers, similar to those that may indicate disease, for violence. They are raising money to help fund this research, but the effort is running into obstacles, in part, over ethical concerns. 'I'm not opposed to research on violence and biomarkers, but I'm concerned about making too big of a leap between biomarkers and violence,' said Troy Duster, a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley. There is concern that science may find biomarkers long before society can deal with its implications."
That would be my guess as a good marker... :>
"This guy has a biomarker for violence... Shoot him! Get him before he attacks!"
I'm reminded of the parody video from The Onion (I think) where you had a jock who was killing the misfits at his high school so that they wouldn't snap and create another columbine.
Very interesting but given our track record for abuse it scares the hell out of me how evil people could benefit from this.
Hi! This is a post from the future.
The good news is that they found the "bio-markers" indicating a propensity towards violence
The bad news is that human being alive has them.
I'd inject them into other animals and then move into orbit!
Biomarkers and "predispositions" to behaviors are going to be used to pre-judge individuals. This is inevitable.
Now I'm afraid about getting arrested for a crime I may possibly commit in the future.
It reminds me of Serenity. Remove violence and you might end up with a population of people not willing to live anymore.
Those aren't biomarkers for violence... they're biomarkers for self-defense! USA! USA!
How to find people with a certain undesirable trait.
And these folks are scientists.
Everything they submit for publication should go trough peer review twice.
There's nothing more dangerous than a parent on a cause that they think killed their kid(s).
Our current climate of the past ten years has been all about pushing the concept of pre-crime. It seems that politicians, media, and scare-mongerers are driving us toward the inevitability of a future where every student is forced - by law - to undergo psychological evaluation during the school year (and adults, perhaps forced to undergo regular psychological evaluation as part of the government mandated "free" health care coverage). Waver much off the accepted "norm" and welcome to pharmaceutical based alteration sentences reinforced by an alternate sentence of incarceration if you refuse. Not because of crimes you have committed, but by crimes everything from your genes to your attitude toward authority or critical-thinking or being too social or not social enough suggest you could theoretically, possibly, maybe, be suspected of potentially in some greater-than-zero probability be able to commit.
This is why you constantly see news coverage during tragic events like shootings veer quickly toward "how could we have caught this with mental evaluation" and "why wasn't he taking more meds?". After all, we are too weak as a society to accept that it might be better to accept a dozen or two dead people from a horrible crime than to violate billions of citizens (over the years).
parents of a child killed in a school shooting research for DNA markers that trigger violence. They succeed.
Nationwide program is created to find potential killers before they can strike. Everyone submits a DNA sample. Original researcher is flagged as having the bad DNA. He runs from police, jumping over maglev cars and spoofing retina recognition systems by having a new eyeball surgically implanted.
Oh wait nevermind, Tom Cruise might sue.
We all know that markers for violence can be found in the shape of one's skull.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
...even if their markers are accurate. What do you do with a person that carries known biomarkers for violence? If they later do something wrong, are you legally liable for allowing them to be born if you've done prenatal testing and found the markers? What about doctors who notice them midway through the person's life, should they be legally required to report such people to the police for observation?
I'm getting flavors of both Minority Report and Brave New World from this: You're left in a place where one of the most ethical options is to pre-judge the people, push medication and counseling on someone who's never done anything just to be safe, or encourage them into a societal role where their violent tendencies won't be as risky. Perhaps you put the violent kids in their own special (high security) elementary school, where they're guided towards a profession in the military, police, sports, or other violent profession?
Very scary, despite how potentially useful such a discovery might be.
Hi. Please keep all phrenology-related comments here. Thanks.
Someone must have caught Gattaca on Encore a few weeks ago. Sounds like a great idea, let's find the biomarker (a.k.a. genes) which identify violent behavior. Then what? Lobotomies? Indefinite internment? Put them on an island where they fight to the death on pay-per-view? Deny them the full rights accorded to them as citizens of the United States?
I seem to remember an era when scientists claimed that African-Americans were inferior to people of Caucasian descent. That proved to be ridiculous, racist, and fraudulent science. This concept is so flawed I can barely scratch the surface. Biomarkers do not determine who a person is or what they will become. Look at the Twins Studies. It is neither nature nor nurture, it is both.
sudo make me a sandwich
Anyone who seeks power over others should be culled from the gene pool. Unfortunately the opposite is true, they are rewarded and exalted.
It's called a US passport
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations
Society has already developed and widely distributed lethal weapons before learning to deal with their implications.
It's not at all clear how delaying a search for genetic biomarkers of violence could make that ethical lapse worse, and it MIGHT improve matters.
It seems ethics is often used as an excuse not to look at problems to which we might not like the answers.
I don't like people who have certain bumpy patterns on their heads.
Phrenology is a great way to find such people.
It's also about the only thing Phrenology is good at, besides maybe keeping Phrenologists employed.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Just think, dear slashdot reader, people just like you have been conscripted into armies throughout the ages, and made to kill and maim. Many gave in to peer pressure and raped too.
Maybe developing conscience and education in human dignity, rights and respect is a better pursuit than trying to find excuses to pre-judge
yeah, it goes too far. is it legal to get the murderer's (Adam's) DNA for this research?
I'm betting that under the right circumstances, every human on the planet has the capacity for violence.
And this will never show you a causal relationship, because it will turn into a debate about nature vs nurture. How much about how you turn out is pre-programmed, and how much is a result of your life experiences? Should we think child soldiers were more inclined to violence? Or the circumstances of their life helped bring it about?
And further, what would you do about it? Brand children as potentially violent because of a genetic marker? And what happens when someone without the marker ends up being violent?
This is just someone looking to assign blame. This will (in my best guess) provide almost zero predictive value, even if there are such markers.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The environment that a person grows up in can significantly impact the person they become in not so obvious ways. There has been research using identical twins that demonstrates this key point.
Doesn't the phrase "There is concern that science may find biomarkers long before society can deal with its implications." carry some implication that society's ability to deal with such implications is actually improving, or at least might actually improve at some point?
On the one hand, I'm not sure why we would expect society to ever be able to 'deal with its implications'. Moral philosophy isn't exactly a progress-packed field, and people have been chewing on the issue of what moral responsibility does or doesn't mean in the absence of free will for centuries, without apparent result.
On the other hand, I'm not sure that having data delivered that we aren't ready to deal with would actually be all that unfamiliar: In the absence of good data, we don't sit, serenely withholding judgement until the facts become clear, we charge forward based on whatever scraps we have, held together with wild-ass guesses and whatever assumptions happen to flatter us.
Consider, the golden age of Eugenics, the late 19th to mid 20th century: aside from better recordkeeping, we barely had a clue beyond the vague selective tendencies that we've been using on plants and livestock for millenia. Did we let that stop us? Hardly.
Really, the biggest novelty of a (at present hypothetical) biological test is that it might defy our comfortable expectations about who the right sort of people and the wrong sort of people are. As long as it's just adding a stamp of 'objectivity' to the parol board's decision to deny some undesirable with an impressive rap sheet an early release, nobody will care; but once it shows up in little timmy from the 'burbs the hand-wringing will start.
Am i the only one seeing the patterns here? Aren't we going, FAST, towards a true fascist police state?
There's you're baseline right there.
About one in a thousand males. Urban legend has it is much more common in prisoners.
Please, "scientists", we've been down this road before... and it did not end well.
What is the point of 1984, Brave New World, Minority Report and Gattaca if, instead of drawing important lessons from this kind of dystopian work, a bunch of nutty scientists & government do PRECISELY WHAT SCIFI WARNS NOT TO DO... This stuff was meant as a warning about constructing the wrong kind of future, rather than as a manual or blueprint for FUCKING THE FUTURE UP FOR EVERYBODY... News like this just makes me sad. Nuff Said...
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
Eugenics is alive and well, it never ehm died :)
FTFY
These guys are looking for a job?
Any time some spectacular event like this happens (shootings, acts of terrorism, etc.), the end result is that our rights are further diminished so we can "prevent this from happening again in the future!"
Because unfortunately, the average voter makes decisions based on emotions/short-term benefits, without considering the ramifications to the society as a whole.
The Patriot Act was bad enough, but now we're going to stereotype people based on physical attributes they have no control over? Ridiculous. I'm almost ready to side with the conspiracy theorists... I mean, face it, if someone in power wants a more authoritarian government, the best way to accomplish that is apparently domestic terrorism.
The only way to stop a bad violent person with a gun is to have a good violent person with a gun.
What ever happened to the claim that Lanza was on fanapt? Others said he was on other psychoactive drugs with potentially violent side effects.
I read that the autopsy only screened for illegal drugs & alcohol. If he was on drugs with known violent side effects, it seems like quite a leap to ignore those and go looking for inherent biomarkers. Has the list of his prescribed meds ever come out?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
There has been a lot of research done in recent years towards looking for biomarkers for a variety of ailments. The problem though is that the biomarker based tests rarely end up being statistically reproducible across a meaningful number of samples; often suffering from too many FPs or too many missed diagnoses. This is worth looking in to, but the odds of it ever developing into a single assay to find the nascent psychopaths in our population are not very good. It has a better chance of becoming a screening method for "hey these people should consider seeking mental health help" than anything but of course you can't force someone to see a shrink just because of a blood test if they are otherwise functioning adults.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The biggest factor that makes us violent or not is cultural. If you want to fix violence, fix the cultural factors that creates it. Unfortunately, some of those factors are tied to money (i.e. if you live in a culture that teach you from kid about justice and find that the rich are above the law won't make you more peaceful), so won't be fixed.
Would it be one of these couples, who are all obviously ACTORS?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QVKu4_JxcE
From 0:49 onwards - do you actually believe that that couple's daughter was shot dead only two days before that interview took place?
The plug will get pulled on this as soon as it is discovered that nearly all politicians test positive for violent and sociopathic genes.
Sadly, there is a strong correlation between the same psychopathic personality characteristics and people in upper management:
http://www.softpanorama.org/Social/Toxic_managers/psychopath_in_the_corner_office.shtml
Will we just end up selecting for docile personalities and anyone who shows biomarkers for violent tendencies gets "special treatment?"
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
You're dealing with probabilities at that point. Child A has a 5% chance of becoming a violent psychopath. Child B had a 95% chance. Do you strangle child B at birth? Or give them their 5% chance of becoming something other than a violent psychopath? Where's the cutoff? And who decides?
Disclaimer: I live in Texas. We'd let child B grow up malnourished and abused in a slum before killing him for obvious psychopathic behavior verified by objective measurement, but we wouldn't abort ahead of time even if it was an option.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I doubt that there are biomarkers for "violence". What can be are biomarker for aggressiveness, which is necessary trait for mankind, if you don't want to turn it into a mass of apathetic zombies.
There may be markers for violence, but I think they are pretty universal. Armies have been turning young men into killers for millennia. As military historian Gwynne Dyer says, "Anybody's son will do." Virtually any young man can become a violent killer if the right buttons are pushed. Of course most young men are able to control these tendencies -- if they didn't, we would need front-end loaders to remove the bodies from the streets every morning. I think it's more likely that they will find a missing marker for self-control among people who are inexplicably violent.
Proverbs 21:19
The Ludovico technique...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
There is a saying: if you look hard enough for evidence, no matter what and where, soon or later you will find it.
I just wonder what would this biomarker look like? Improper skull form? Skin color? or, missing DNA chain?
...it's called the "Y" chromosome.
Now what do these geniuses propose to do about people with that biomarker?
If we never bother to explore the question we just don't really know. There very well could be many biomarkers for violence. How we act on that knowledge is the real moral dilemma. I personally think they are too close to the subject and really if they want to help others they would just fund the research. However, we already have one linked biomarker, and that's lead exposure - but we can't just start rounding up everyone with higher blood-lead concentrations and force them into chelation therapy. Obviously the benign solution is to remove lead sources, such as paints and leaded gasoline. If the culprit turns out to be DNA, then obviously this becomes a much larger issue.
You presume a uniform response to what should and shouldn't happen.
There are always going to be people whose ideal of a perfect, ordered society is exactly this kind of thing.
They will proclaim loudly they're Doing It For The Common Good, and believe we should be thanking them for it. In their mind, it will be Right and Just as long as Everyone Follows Their Plan (by choice or by force don't matter so much).
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Genetics are passe. We are now on to epigenetics.
For example, reversible epigenetic tags are linked to reversible behaviorable patterns.
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120916160845.htm
Yes, because everyone knows that every choice we make is predetermined by the genes given to us by our parents, and isn't actually a concious choice made by a human being... O_o
The only reason violence trends in genetics is because you *tend* to learn your violence level from the same people you get your genes from.
watch-lists...
Is the subject human? If yes, then they have a predisposition towards violence.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Introduction to Human Behavioral Biology - Robert Sapolsky
Here is a no-pre-requisite course from Stanford on the topic of the links between human behavior and biology. Listen and be educated on how ignorantly these people are framing the issue.
The interrelationship between biology and environment are inseparable and the value of a set of genetic markers related to violence in humans would have such a weak correlation as to predict almost nothing, but the opportunity for social misuse is huge. We should do (and are already doing) research into these relationships including relationships with violence, but we must be extremely careful about what we expect to get out of it and how we frame what the knowledge means so that the public is less likely to do stupid things with it.
... Excellent predictor of violence!
Violence and evilness are hard to measure. Nowadays psychologists have next to IQ invented the E(mpathy)Q Empathy can be measured with question lists. It turned out that (unappreciated) violent acts are mostly done by people with a low EQ or an EQ = 0 Research among monoclonal twins showed that like the IQ the EQ is fairly genetical. Of course nurture has also an influence on IQ and EQ
Well I haven't read all the comments I'm sure at least one of them will mention what I'm about to say. Just because you have a marker might not make you commit violent acts, so one of the early problems I see is how to determine if the marker is active. It's possible to discover a case where you have a prefect moral human who wont kill a fly and ted bundy having the same marker. Non the less this seems interesting from it's description.
Step 1: Scare people into overreacting
Step 2: Find biomarkers for violence
Step 3: Weed out those who have the biomarker from the gene pool
Step 4: Invade and enslave
Why waste time on violent people. Let's look for the bio-marker for people who become politicians and lawyers?
That's what this sounds like, biomarkers for actions? I don't think so. Who's resposible for evaluating what actions are considered violent under what conditions? Where are they going to get their dna samples from, prisons most likely that are filled with people who are 400% more likely to be in jail becasue of their race and the way our society treats them, what a great test basis. Please stop this utter ridiculous nonsense, it sucks that your kid got killed in America but this is no way to cope with it.
Had been prescribed for a huge fraction of those who turned out to be mass killers. Real good correlation. Could be that since we shut down most of the asylum system (which did have a lot of issues on its own) we let people be on the street we used to keep in mental-hospital custody, trusting them to take drugs that may or may not solve their problems? Medical hubris?
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
That's what happens when RICH people are exposed to violence. They can throw money at the issue. Us useless eaters just have to take it in stride.
There was a very interesting Ted Talk on the exact same topic which I heard via the NPR Ted talks radio hour: The violence within us. Highly recommended listening (http://www.npr.org/2013/03/28/175609678/the-violence-within-us especially referring to this talk: http://www.npr.org/2013/05/31/175613089/what-does-the-mind-of-a-killer-look-like)
Now you mad? Cannot stand the truth, can you?
You presume a uniform response to what should and shouldn't happen.
There are always going to be people whose ideal of a perfect, ordered society is exactly this kind of thing.
They will proclaim loudly they're Doing It For The Common Good, and believe we should be thanking them for it. In their mind, it will be Right and Just as long as Everyone Follows Their Plan (by choice or by force don't matter so much).
I work with one of these people. He has told me what a great vision Brave New World is, where everyone is tested for aptitude and given their role accordingly. I smiled and nodded while being internally horrified. I wondered how he could miss the whole point of the book.
The presence of a Y chromosome is highly correlated with a tendency to violence. According to:
Why Are Men So Violent? Men perpetrate about 90 percent of the world's homicides
While it is a proven biomarker, it is totally useless, as I predict all other biomarkers that they might find would be.
I'm pretty sure you will find correlation between the Y chromosome and violence.
It's the Pax. The G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate that we added to the air processors. It was supposed to calm the population, weed out aggression. Well, it works. The people here stopped fighting. And then they stopped everything else. They stopped going to work, they stopped breeding, talking, eating. There's 30 million people here, and they all just let themselves die.
These people are clearly stuck in the third stage. Anyone helping them with this project is preventing them from healing.
Did anyone else immediately think of the Miranda colony from Serenity?
Mal and the Firefly Crew already proved that the Alliance tried to alter the DNA marker to remove Violance from the population of Miranda with G-23 PAX and had the side-effect of Creating REAVERS! Guess we need to try to create G-24 PAX and hope the 1% of the population who become Reavers aren't as aggressive this time....
We already know, we have known since the 1970. It's child abuse that is the root of violence but we as an society are not ready for the implications of this knowledge. To accept this knowledge into society is to ban spanking stop mental abuse (religion)m it's to stop brain dead public "education" to accept this is to acknowledge that children is human beings with all the rights that come with it.
It is certainly true that our medical care system could not deal with patients held because they will probably but not certainly commit violent crimes. Our legal system would also suffer a crash and burn shock if they ever had to admit that some violence is caused by physical defect. There is very little recognition that violence can be compelled by psychological demands. Even the issue of intent and free will would struggle to exist in law.
We already know that inmates admit to being under the influence of drugs or alcohol for 85% of the crimes for which they are sentenced. If we combine that with histories of inmates, unable to complete school, or unable to hold a job, or simply illiterate then we have every reason to think that depression or other mental defect is almost certainly behind almost all crime. People who are ill do not do well at school usually and they do not do well in employment. The fact that they turn to drugs or alcohol indicates a very strong need to feel better. People in reasonable states of mental health simply do not have such a great need to feel better.
The NWO/Powers that be have slowly introducing into society and genetics of the feminine male. They thought they would subside the masculine man by GMOs environmental chemicals, flouride, etc.. but it's not working as fast as they hoped.
So now the powers that be need to feminize masculinity completely. Newtown was an inside job/Psyop. They need a reason first to get away with this kind of illegal screening shit. First off my attempting to clamp down on gun control, but then there's things like this article. If they can find reason to make masculinity a crime they will. You see testosterone causes aggressive, and some may say violent sometimes, behavior in males if the levels are very high and flowing.
If we can criminalize being a male, getting angry, and make docile/passive feminizm the norm, then the powers the be are going to have a much easier time finalizing the enslavement of humanity (We are about 70% there)
Mod me down, never gave a fuck what slashdot thinked, I just post truth for the record.
Perhaps linking ambition to the violence gene would be a wonderful excuse to have the government tied into every minute aspect of life. This is the wet dream of every college professor because they resent the ambitious individuals who dropped out and start businesses and live better than they do. So they do this; they testify before Congress on how certain laws need to be passed to harm those ambitious drop outs who now liver better than they do.
Ha-ha! I'll show those [ douchebags | assholes | jerks | motherfuckers | ambitious organized crime ethnics ]!
--
Another fine opinion from The Fucking Psychopath®.
So we find the biomarkers and then we start a public registry of people who have them. That way they can be monitored closely and the communities they live in can take steps to make themselves safe! Ban them from owning weapons, learning martial arts, participating in certain sports, holding certain (postal) jobs, keep them away from schools, require constant counseling.
I don't know about you but I would feel much safer.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Psychopaths + semiautomatic weapons = mass murder. If we're not going to do anything about the weapons then we goddamn well better do something about the psychopaths.
And who knows, maybe this research will save some future classroom full of 6 year olds and their teachers. The incredible, incomprehensible reality is that we haven't done shit to address Newtown. Or Virginia Tech. Or Columbine. Or Aurora. Or San Ysidro. Or Oak Creek. Or Tuscon. And on and on.
We might not like the thought of rattlesnakes in the back yard. But we ignore it at our peril.
We don't like the thought of getting cancer. But we ignore it at our peril.
We don't like the thought of our aging parents inevitably dying. But it's reality.
Some truths are very unpleasant. But they're accurate descriptions of reality nonetheless. Scientific research should not be stifled by politics, lest it lead us back into the Dark Ages. Galileo encountered this kind of thing. Stem cell research encountered this kind of thing.
I wonder what said bio-markers would do for one's insurance.
Sorry Mr Jones, but your bio-markers indicate a high risk of road-rage, so we've raised your car insurance...
Sorry Mr Smith, but we're denied your life insurance as you're too high a risk of losing control...
Sorry Ms Wu, but your house-insurance rates had to be increased in case you fly off the handle and get sued by a neighbour...
I submit that you can take any person -- biomarker or no -- and put them in intensely depraved conditions surrounded by pain, death, manipulation, and terror, and after prolonged exposure you will find them reverted to nearly feral state. We keep thinking we're somehow above the rest of the animal kingdom because we've got these highly developed brains and opposable thumbs. We forget we're not all that different from our tree-dwelling relatives, and we all have the ability to be completely animalistic if put in the "right" circumstances.
What I find interesting is you see these school shootings not being done by the school jocks, or the "popular" kids, or even disgruntled staff. It's being done by the quiet, shunned ones who didn't "fit in" and were usually bullied. Make someone a powerless outcast, nurture them with taunts, and remove any possibility of hope, and you will get someone who will lash out. It's not genetic; it's behavioral.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
These parents are attempting to find a biological solution to a sociological problem. The reason these kids go on shooting sprees is not because they are inherently violent. They go on shooting sprees because they are unable to cope with being constantly bullied by their classmates, ignored by their parents and teachers, and ultimately feel rejected by society at large. The spree is a final act of desperation and revenge towards the system that did everything it could to break them or marginalize them. I'm not trying to say that there aren't genes that make people more predisposed to committing violent acts, but even when you do find them, I'm fairly certain that some of the perpetrators of school shootings will not contain that gene. If you want to reduce the number of school shootings, do everything you can to make sure your kids are socially adjusted so that they aren't the ones shooting up the school and make sure that your kids are also not the ones bullying someone else's kid to their breaking point.
as soon as you start doing this, people will insist that you test everyone at birth and put "bad seeds" into a list. after this, the list will almost always be targeted for crimes as well as persecution. one step further from this would be culling the bad seeds.... which, while seems to be a good idea on paper for a crimeless society.... it is just one step closer to a conform nation, which is bad.
These scientists obviously haven't seen Firefly or Serenity.
That's the problem with Utopia. The creator thinks everyone is just like him. It's easy to predict a crowd but a crowd already has common needs. It's difficult to predict an individual more accurately than her long-term/life-style choices.
We need extremely strict laws against genetic discrimination, I would go as far as to make possession of genetic information by an employer, landlord or other person who is not a healthcare provider or genetic testing facility prima facie evidence of intent to use such information for discriminatory purposes.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Hello,
We as a society need to label those with this tendency and keep them under observation and/or separate them from the rest of society. And anyone caught with this gene must be reported, no matter at what stage in their lives, to the authorities, for immediate removal. We have seen too many Sandy Hook instances to be allowed otherwise.
> A Newtown couple, both scientists .. are now involved in a search for biomarkers, similar to those that may indicate disease, for violence.
Anyone can turn violent. ANYONE. We still don't really know shit about the mind. That's what makes us so demonizing of the James Holmeses and the Adam Lanzas. That's why the insanity defense rarely, if ever, works. If you totally loose control, rendering the following actions unstoppable, how the fuck can you be guilty? Even some schizophrenics go to prison, when they really had no say in what they did. You can plot for weeks and not really know what's going on. We are scared because it is a possibility for any one of us.
Wouldn't the simple presence of a Y chromosome be so overwhelming as to mask all the other genetic markers?
There already is a known genetic marker for violence. In the US, bearers of this genetic marker commit 70% of all property crimes, 90% of all murders, are 9 times more likely to be imprisoned, and comprise 93% of all prison inmates.
This marker is known as "Y chromosome".
Think of that.
So taking away freedoms and making them into an out-group. With no behavioral basis just a reading on a machine.
It won't work because it never has worked. It just alienates and causes resentment and anger...things that *definitely* cause a person to be more 'at-risk'...
'special protection from certain environments'......indeed
Thank you Dave Raggett
I've never found (not for lack of trying) the person who said this, but I think it was Frank Herbert: The purpose of science fiction isn't, necessarily, to predict, but to prevent, as well.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
Isn't this just eugenics brought up to date?
Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, godlike technology.
As a species, and to use so extreme an understatement that it strains even the label of "absurd euphemism", we urgently need to put intense resources into the study of philosophy, ethics, politics and arts before our current state of ignorance gets us all killed.
On the bright side, it would be a resounding demonstration of a solution to the Fermi Paradox, and it would be, finally, an end to human suffering...
Biomarkers for sexual acts. Just think how much violence is created from it, starting from hormonal effects. A couple of modifications here and there and no sexual urges anymore... And in two to three generations your offspring does not understand the randomness of the acting mongrels and their violent sexual behavior. And they can select the best genes, always. Brave new world.
This progress is inevitable. There used to be more murders, more uncertainty, more everything. Life was a chaos back then. Now we know how to control things. Now we can eradicate those "ape genes" as WE THINK nobody lives in those conditions anymore. Poor health, no food, street violence. What are those? We don't have to think about their problems are our "lower needs" are satisfied.
Obviously whoever dreamed this up has never read the Seville Statement on Violence, specifically point 2:
"It is scientifically incorrect to say that war or any other violent behaviour is genetically programmed into our human nature. [...]"
So there, it's been defined to be incorrect. Because we say so. Let that be a lesson to all of you.
What they should find is a biomarker for crime based on sociopathy or psychopathy. That could lead to a better future for humans.