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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (36543)	8/29/1999 3:25:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

Blue, most of our studies of post-traumatic stress syndrome have been with people who have experienced vicious civil wars or similar catastrophes. In such cases, one simply cannot say that pre-existing low serotonin levels "triggered" the abuse. A certain proportion of those affected may have already had PTS before seeing their families chopped up with machetes or dismembered by bombs, but that would be irrelevant, I should think... You are concerned about the reappearance of "eugenics." We (human beings) have tried to eradicate populations based on color, language and religion, is it so unthinkable that we might decide that people with poor neurochemistry or brain structure shouldn't reproduce? It might not be unthinkable, if we could not alter neurochemistry. But we have already made progress in doing that. I have a brother, for example, who suffered all his adult life with mental illness, but thanks to newer medications, which have helped to correct his neurochemical imbalance, he is finally out of the woods.... We don't object to medications that cure purely "physical" illness. Why should we object to anything aimed at curing "mental" (as if the mind did not exist in the body!) illness? And even if we are not talking about outright illness: we don't object to cosmetic surgery, to correct our outer appearance, and so why would we object to tinkering with neurochemistry, to correct our "internal appearance"? Joan