{"id":331,"date":"2013-07-16T15:13:02","date_gmt":"2013-07-16T15:13:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genotopia.peachpuff-wolverine-566518.hostingersite.com\/?p=331"},"modified":"2013-07-16T15:13:02","modified_gmt":"2013-07-16T15:13:02","slug":"stop-saying-biologically-programmed-goddamit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/genotopia\/331\/stop-saying-biologically-programmed-goddamit\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop saying “biologically programmed,” goddamit!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s your quick daily dose of biological determinism. This is nice because it combines deterministic thinking about both genes and brains. If this article were a bird it would be a Great Blue Heron–not exactly rare, but impressive nonetheless. I’m going to pick on it, largely because I slept like crap last night and I’m feeling cranky.<\/p>\n

US News and World Report asks, “Could a gene help make you obese?<\/a>” Okay, that right there is either shocking (You mean it’s not just eating too much?) or trivial (No shit. Genes could and indeed do\u00a0help<\/em> in making me everything I am).<\/p>\n

People who carry two copies of a variant form of the “FTO” gene are more likely to feel hungry soon after eating a meal, because they carry higher levels of the hunger-producing hormone ghrelin in their bloodstream, an international team of scientists found.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Holy crap! There’s a hunger-producing hormone? Bip! Bip! Bip! “Hello, World Health Organization? Yea, look, this is gonna sound crazy, but we can END WORLD HUNGER TOMORROW! Seriously! All we need is four tanker-freighters of anti-ghrelin…”<\/p>\n

What’s more, brain scans revealed this double FTO gene variant changes the way in which the brain reacts to food and ghrelin.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh god, where’s the Alka-Seltzer? I knew I shouldn’t have had that third plate of deep-fried ghrelin poppers before the game last night. Probably why I slept so crappy…<\/p>\n

And now we come to the neuro-determinism part of the post.<\/p>\n

People with the double variant displayed different neural responses in the brain region known to regulate appetite and the pleasure\/reward center that normally responds to alcohol and recreational drug use.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t have a problem with referencing the nucleus accumbens, the so-called “pleasure center.” That research is decades old. But the phrasing here subtly and repeatedly encourages the crass phrenological misperception that the brain is just a bunch of lumps each dedicated to some 21st century activity, like chugging Jaegermeister, snorting Adderall, and swallowing whole Twinkies. It’s not, people. The genome doesn’t work like that and the brain doesn’t work like that. It seems that way, because we study them by trying to figure out how brains and genes influence stuff we already do. When you look from the bottom up at how they work to produce signals, it turns out to be much more complex and subtle.<\/p>\n

“Oh, but Genotopia,” the journalist complains. “I can’t go on about the nucleus accumbens! I know it’s a simplification, but these little short-cuts are necessary in order to write about complex science for wide audiences!”<\/p>\n

Okay, whiner, I’ll do it for you. Ta-da:<\/p>\n

People with the double variant displayed greater activity in two key brain regions, one involved in creating the sensation of hunger, the other linked to feelings of pleasure.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You see? Easy. A couple of little tweaks and you introduce hints of contingency and inter-connectedness, rather than implying that we’re all made out of Legos. No waffling, and no Latin.<\/p>\n

Just so the poor writer doesn’t feel singled out, the scientists do it too. The lead author on the study says,<\/p>\n

\u00a0“What this study shows us is that individuals with two copies of the obesity-risk FTO variant are biologically programmed to eat more.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Really? You’re going to go with “biologically programmed”? I thought we got rid of that language just after Jurassic Park. People homozygous for this one variant may well show a statistical correlation with obesity. It may even be legitimate to say they have a predisposition to eat more. But for Mendel’s sake, ban the cyborg-speak, will you?<\/p>\n

Okay, I have to get to work, so I’m not going to go through this entire article. But look, this is an increasingly important issue. We are constantly being told how we have to take our healthcare into our own hands. Education is crucial. And the single most important concept in dealing with the really complex systems of the body–the genome, the brain, the immune system–is probability. By 2013, deterministic speech like this is just laziness. Good science writers and careful scientists don’t say this stuff any more. Doing so is a real disservice to a public that is increasingly dependent on translations of science for its understanding of biology and health. Trash those old metaphors, adopt a few new clich\u00e9s and stock phrases, and we will be a long way toward a healthier understanding of our own bodies.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s your quick daily dose of biological determinism. This is nice because it combines deterministic thinking about both genes and brains. If this article were a bird it would be a Great Blue Heron–not exactly rare, but impressive nonetheless. I’m going to pick on it, largely because I slept like crap last night and I’m … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[324,323,325,37,231,38,327,329,326,328],"class_list":["post-331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-brains","tag-cranky","tag-fto","tag-genes","tag-genes-for","tag-genetic-determinism","tag-ghrelin","tag-neuro-determinism","tag-obesity","tag-sarcasm"],"yoast_head":"\nStop saying "biologically programmed," goddamit! - Genotopia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/genotopia\/331\/stop-saying-biologically-programmed-goddamit\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Stop saying "biologically programmed," goddamit!\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here’s your quick daily dose of biological determinism. This is nice because it combines deterministic thinking about both genes and brains. If this article were a bird it would be a Great Blue Heron–not exactly rare, but impressive nonetheless. I’m going to pick on it, largely because I slept like crap last night and I’m ... 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From 1997 to 2002, he was on the history faculty at The George Washington University, where he also served as Deputy Director of the Center for History of Recent Science. The Center\u2019s director and founder was Horace Freeland Judson (The Eighth Day of Creation), who, along with John McPhee and Monty Python, Comfort considers among his biggest writing influences. Comfort\u2019s books include The Science of Human Perfection: How Genes Became the Heart of American Medicine (Yale, 2012), The Tangled Field: Barbara McClintock\u2019s Search for the Patterns of Genetic Control (Harvard, 2001), and the edited volume, The Panda\u2019s Black Box: Opening Up the Intelligent Design Debate (Johns Hopkins, 2007). In addition to scholarly articles, he has written for Natural History, the New York Times Book Review, National Public Radio, Nature, Science, New Scientist, The Believer, and other publications. 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