Understanding the Times

Derek Thomas

the chemistry of behavior,

or where are my blue genes?

In a recent editorial in the London edition of The Sunday Times (July 3, 2005) Minette Marrin raised the issue of crime and genetics. In a piece entitled, “Mad, bad or simply born that way,” the editorial discussed the trial of the 19-year-old Brian Blackwell, a medical student from Liverpool. Blackwell was found guilty of the brutal murder of his parents. Within hours of the murder (a frenzied attack in which Blackwell’s father was stabbed over thirty times and his mother bludgeoned with a claw-hammer), he packed a suitcase, took eleven of his parents’ credit cards, called a taxi and, together with his unsuspecting girlfriend, flew to New York and spent three days in the Plaza Hotel, dining on lobster and champagne, at the cost of almost $8,000. In total, he ran up a sum of around $80,000 before returning home and eventually being arrested.

It emerged during the trial that he was a habitual liar and, as Marrin somewhat self-evidently observed, “someone with something, mysteriously wrong with him.” The point of the editorial was to show the change that has taken place in public reaction to cases of this kind. Instead of being reviled on the front pages of the Tabloids as an evil monster, “Today justice is beginning to be more merciful and the judge in this case accepted that this wretched boy, although not insane, suffers from acute narcissistic personality disorder and therefore could not be charged with murder.” He pled the lesser charge of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, something which raises huge moral implications as to the relationship between behavior and responsibility. Oliver James, a medical psychologist, claims that 80% of all convicted prisoners suffer from a personality disorder of some sort. The editorial opined at length at the lack of scientific verifiability for such disorders, that objective measurements were almost impossible to acquire and that once again our society is becoming the victim of the cult of expertise—in this case the mostly unverifiable pronouncements of psychologists.

In 2002 a prestigious biological ethics lobby, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, argued that as soon as reliable evidence is established linking genes to aggression or violence, such information could “assist in determining degrees of blame” adding (curiously) that “genetic predisposition to antisocial behaviour should not be a defence.” (See, “Crime gene ‘should mean lighter sentence’, The Times October 2, 2002). In the USA, too, the Violence Initiative in 1992 was established to study genetic predisposition toward violence and criminal behavior. The buzz words then were “eugenics,” “the crime gene” and “genetic determinism” and the fears of social policy based on race was much debated.

Of course, the modern world has only itself to blame. It was Darwin who suggested that patterns of behavior are “determined” by its evolutionary past. The Italian anthropologist, Cesare Lombroso suggested as far back as the 1870s that criminality reflects an earlier state of humankind and that criminals are therefore recognizable by certain features—a low brow, a flattened nose, an “apish” appearance! In the 1920s prison sterilization programs were justified on this basis. More recently claims were made that the XYY chromosome in males was determinative of violent tendency. Phil Donahue once alluded to the XYY chromosome as a way “to tell if your child is a serial killer.” Other statistics are bandied about in serious newspapers suggesting that the key to a brave new world of acceptable social behavior is genetics. In our time, the homosexual lobby has been ambivalent on the issue of the “gay gene,”—partly in order to argue that “if we are born that way” we can hardly be blamed for it, and partly to argue its normalcy, but even gay scientists have poured scorn on the idea.

Last fall, an issue of Time magazine featured a particularly striking cover: a blue painting of a woman deep in solemn prayer, eyes closed, fingertips together. Etched into her forehead was a double helix, the end of each polynucleotide strand forming a hand. The headline read, “THE GOD GENE” and asked whether DNA compels us to seek a higher power. “Believe it or not,” said the cover, “some scientists say yes.” The Time cover was in response to the publication of a book The God Gene: How Faith is Hard-Wired into our Genes (Doubleday) by National Cancer Institute molecular geneticists, Dean Hamer. Hamer claimed that faith lies in the vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2). To date, no peer-reviewed journal has published the research.

Whatever the facts, and science has shown very little by way of solid proof as to the connection between genetics and behavior, more than one issue emerges.

First, Christians should avoid over-reaction. Donald McKay invented the expression “nothing-buttery” by which he meant to point out the tendency in all argumentation to employ a position that suggests something is “nothing but this or that” when the truth of the matter often suggested that “it is a little bit of both.” To deny genetic determinism outright would be both futile and eventually destructive of Christianity—another instance of Christianity engaging in bad science, as in the case of Galileo—pronounced a heretic by the church for his suggestion that the earth moved around the Sun.

Second, it is interesting to note that modern society which prides itself on the issues of freedom and liberty resorts here to a wholly deterministic view of the universe—a view that limits human freedom (free will!) to a far greater degree than anything proposed by the villain of modernity—Calvinism! We are what we are because we are “made” that way. Some blind impersonal force governs the course of our lives and there is little or nothing that we can do about it. The moral compass of modern society is caught on the horns of a dilemma.

Third, it may well be that the bias toward sinful behavior evidenced in every human heart (what we Christians call, ever since Augustine coined the term, “original sin”) has a genetic component. We sin because we are sinners, born that way with a predisposition to sin. We are nonetheless, responsible for this condition and liable to perdition apart from any consideration of personal sin on our part. Similarly, genetic explanations however significant they may be will not preclude moral responsibility on our part.

 A genetic basis is being suggested for all kinds of things from alcoholism to gambling addictions to violent behavior to excessive television watching. They represent efforts to remove social stigma and to classify sinful behaviors as normal, or at least understandable. We want science to heal our diseases and excuse our sins. Our sinful behavior, rooted in biology or not, is a matter for which we are fully accountable. After all, as the Psalmist confessed: "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me" (Psalm 51:5). No part of human existence is free from sin and its injury, including our genetic code. In the words of Ambrose of Milan (340-397), "Before we are born we are infected with the contagion, and before we see the light of day we experience the injury of our origin."

And Blackwell?

Though found guilty, the British legal system being what it is, he could be free in six years!