Even biological science shakes its head in disgust

Powerful message. Deeply moving.

The trend is particularly disturbing for the clients, but
it is also disturbing even from a research perspective.

As the biological science moves inexorably toward the
increasingly evolutionary-genetic view of human behavior,
we also have the frightening side-effect that we become
more accepting in general of purely biological fixes as
well. I'm not equating Torrey with Dr. Faustius, but he does exemplify the lack of simple scientific
humility that is called for when we deal with complex behavior and the full human experience.

Given that pharmacological fixes are more convenient and drive a great deal of
positive economic flow in large industries, the sad move toward a more exclusively
medical-neurological model is hard to stop, just because it happens to be based on
scientific misunderstandings. These include simplistic determinism (which I doubt
even Torrey believes in except when forced into debate) being confused with modern
interactionism, and gene-protein-behavior links specific
to drug effects assumed to somehow manage to negate the ones responsible for the evolved capacity for self-control and even the fundamental self-regulation found
in all living organisms.

The "gene for" and "neurotransmitter for" and "brain region for" rhetoric that makes
so much sense in driving research to investigate the sources of human variation ...
and it really does ... also inadvertently helps fuel the existing industries of social
control. By putting on blinders and focusing on specific causal chains to the exclusion
of others. That's shown clearly by the fact that huge areas of human behavioral and
experiential variation are not accounted for by factors that can yet be fixed by
developing or prescribing drugs. And it is obvious that overall our use of drugs
has currently gone way beyond our diagnostic capacity for actually fitting drugs
to putative syndromes, and has taken away significantly from our humanity in helping
people in distress.

The question is whether our answer lies in developing better medical treatments,
refining our use of drugs, to better align with the mythical worldview of simplistic
chemical determinism (the "chemical imbalance") or by expanding our view of the causes
of human distress to something closer to the actual modern biological model.

Replies:

Re:Even biological science shakes its head in disgust, by Monica, 09/05/00 Re:Even biological science shakes its head in disgust, by psychneuro@aol.com, 09/06/00 Re:Even biological science shakes its head in disgust, by George O, 09/07/00 Re:Even biological science shakes its head in disgust, by MOnica, 09/11/00

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