We are all chemical now

“Brain abnormality may be to blame for anti-social teenagers”

This was the splash at the top of a piece in the Independent about a study carried out by the Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge.  The brains of 73 children were scanned while they were shown pictures of sad or angry faces. The scans of 50 who had a diagnosis of “conduct disorder” showed much less activity in the part of the brain linked with emotion than those of the remaining 23 who did not have the diagnosis. And the more severe the “disorder”, the less activity was revealed by the scans.

The explanation for this was that the larger group must lack a capacity for empathy which makes them more likely to behave in an anti-social way.  Predictably, the piece was padded out with comments about the increasing prevalence of the “disorder”, the high cost of the remedial education which such children need, and the expense to the Exchequer of the sanctions and punishments which are used to control them.  Inevitably, a doctor from the MRC suggested that the research was saying that “it has a biological basis and this is something we should consider as a medical issue”.  Logically, he went on: “early identification of a biological abnormality may be a route to take in terms of early intervention”.

Tucked away on page 19 and supported by a half-page ad promoting Sky Broadband (“Happily Ever After”), it is a Tardis of a piece – small and unremarkable on the outside but packed with ideology and ramifications on the inside. Like the croupier’s rake clawing in losing chips from the Blackjack table, the biologising approach systematically gathers in irksome behaviour, distressing states of mind and other phenomena which ruffle the smooth meniscus of society.  The motor of this is the prospect of new territory and unmined seams of demand for a variety of vested interests which skilfully spin deviance from the norm as brain illness and a fault in the machine.

Laziness is another chip, recently identified by the diligent scientists of the University of California who noticed that selectively bred busy mice tended to produce busy offspring.  They were impressively alert to the possibility that “down the road people could be treated pharmacologically for low activity levels”. Perhaps sensing the first whispers of protest from happy slobs, they smuggle in a reference to the “huge epidemic of obesity” in order to neutralise any ideological reservations about the chemical treatment of laziness.  And, strangely enough, this was followed a few days later by research which claimed that ideological or political beliefs may also be genetically determined, right-wingers having a larger amygdala and those on the left “thicker anterior cingulates” (sic). Whether a strong belief in genetic determinism is also genetically determined is no doubt a hypothesis waiting in the queue for future research.   

But, as with any social trend, it’s not the step but the destination which matters. Accepting the premise means accepting the consequences – of earlier intervention in the lives of those who are deemed to carry a particular deficit; of indoctrination being passed off as treatment and, in time, of genetic manipulation in the interests of pre-empting suffering and expense becoming routine.  The drive to manufacture mind will be justified on the grounds that it is more humane and cost-effective than the various forms of hit-and-miss treatment and punishment we have now.  The distinction between prison and asylum will break down – a process which is already well under way.  To be different and difficult will be to be ill; those who protest will become patients; values, beliefs and relationships will be symptoms of malfunction; mind will become synonymous with brain.