posted 10-04-2002 01:26 PM               

Wed Oct 2,11:02 AM ET

By Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) - Judges of the future should be able to consider offenders' genetic make-up before sentencing them, a leading British think-tank said on Wednesday.

A criminal's genetic disposition toward anti-social behavior, such as violence or aggression, should be as valid a factor for judges as psychiatric reports or personality disorders, Britain's Nuffield Council on Bioethics said.

"If you found that someone had a genetic make-up of this kind together with certain environmental factors, you might find probation plus anger treatment or therapy more appropriate than sending them to prison," Professor Bob Hepple, chairman of the council's working party, told Reuters.

"If people are found guilty of criminal behavior it shouldn't be an excuse but it may be relevant to the way in which they are treated."

The council, a body formed to identify and report on ethical questions raised by advances in research, made its recommendation in a report entitled "Genetics and Human Behavior: the Ethical Context."

An international team of researchers said in August they had identified a single gene which might explain why some boys abused in childhood -- but not all -- grew up to be violent or aggressive. They found 85 percent of young boys who had a weakened version of the gene and had been abused turned to criminal or anti-social behavior.

Hepple said it showed the importance of both nature and nurture in an individual's development.

"If you are aggressive you can go and have anger management courses. You can restrain your genetic predisposition or channel it in certain ways," he said. He also dismissed the notion that genetic information alone could be used to predict anti-social behavior. "We don't think the case is made out yet for preventive detention or anything of that kind. That would be horrifying science fiction stuff," he said.

NO "DESIGNER BABIES"

The report also came out against the idea of "designer babies." In February, Britain's fertility watchdog allowed a couple to select an embryo to have the same genetic match as their terminally-ill three-year-old son who needed a bone marrow transplant. But Hepple strongly rejected the idea of designer babies where parents could use genetics to play a role in their baby's intelligence, sexual orientation or personality.

Although as yet there is no scientific evidence to link certain genes to particular behavioral traits, he said it would arise, creating "really serious moral issues."

"We shouldn't be trying in any way to impose a more intelligent child or a child with a particular type of personality," he said. "If you allow it for abnormal conditions such as chronic diseases, it doesn't follow that you have to allow it for what we regard as the normal make-up of mankind."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=570&ncid=753&e= 3&u=/nm/20021002/sc_nm/health_britain_genes_dc

All in the Genes?
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Stephen_Nottingham/DNA8.htm

posted 10-04-2002 01:33 PM               

quote:

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Researchers in the field of behavioural genetics are examining how genes and the environment influence human behavioural traits such as aggression, anxiety, homosexuality, intelligence, novelty-seeking and anti-social behaviour. Much of the research focuses on behavioural characteristics that we all share to varying degrees, rather than traits that are considered to be abnormal, unhealthy or pathological.

This is a complicated and often controversial area of genetic research. As well as concerns about the validity of the scientific methodologies involved, there are many ethical, legal, social and practical implications. These include concerns about the effects of developing genetic tests for normal behavioural traits and the way in which such information could be used to try to predict, change or select such traits.

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http://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/behaviouralgenetics/index.asp

http://www.gig.org.uk/docs/gig_nuffbg.pdf.

posted 10-04-2002 01:43 PM               

What is behavioral genetics? [text provided by Joseph McInerney]

quote:

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Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911) was the first scientist to study heredity and human behavior systematically. The term "genetics" did not even appear until 1909, only 2 years before Sir Francis Galton's death, but with or without a formal name, the study of heredity always has been, at its core, the study of biological variation. Human behavioral genetics, a relatively new field, seeks to understand both the genetic and environmental contributions to individual variations in human behavior. That is not an easy task, for the following reasons...

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http://www.ornl.gov/hgmis/elsi/behavior.html