Hey, they're doing it right. Addiction Genes Identified by Chinese Scientists

[johnny861]

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNe...24467620080108

Drug addiction genes identified

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Scientists in China have identified about 400 genes that appear to make some people more easily addicted to drugs, opening the way for more effective therapies and addiction control.

Experts believe genetic factors account for up to 60 percent of a person's vulnerability to drug addiction, with environmental factors accounting for the remainder.

The researchers focused on four addictive substances -- cocaine, opiate, alcohol and nicotine -- and mapped out five main routes, or "molecular pathways", that lead to addiction, they wrote in the journal PLoS Computational Biology.

Figuring out pathways are important in the study of complex diseases as they narrow down the genes and proteins involved. In diseases such as cancer, pathways help doctors make more accurate diagnoses and predictions of the course of the disease.

For drug addiction, the researchers said: "These common pathways may underlie shared rewarding and response mechanisms and may be targets for effective treatments for a wide range of addictive disorders."

The researchers trawled through more than 1,000 peer-reviewed medical publications that linked genes and chromosome regions to drug addiction over the past 30 years and assembled a list of 1,500 addiction-related genes.

Some of these genes turned up more frequently than others in the pathways and scientists narrowed the list to 396.

[PETA]

Originally Posted by johnny861

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNe...24467620080108

Drug addiction genes identified

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Scientists in China have identified about 400 genes that appear to make some people more easily addicted to drugs, opening the way for more effective therapies and addiction control.

that's ominous....

[reason]

about 400 genes that appear to make some people more easily addicted to drugs,

the whole thing where science finds a needle in a hay stack..... and then the media proposes it as the final answer....... is getting old to me

[GROOVY]

so does that mean that they can develop a new gene therapy drug or something that will let me do as much heroin as i want without getting addicted? sweet
-DJEtaine

[Sinner]

So is this the same gene that gives someone the "addiction" to do art or whatever is important to them?

[johnny861]

Originally Posted by reason

the whole thing where science finds a needle in a hay stack..... and then the media proposes it as the final answer....... is getting old to me

I'd hardly call it a needle in a haystack considering the human genome has between 25,000 and 30,000 thousand genes.

And I'm not sure where the article says there is a final answer, however, they do say it opens up the doors to more effective therapy.

I can't say they are in the wrong for saying this, considering the progress made with gene therapy in other areas.

[PETA]

its easier in China to simply identify those with the genetic marker and terminate those pregnancies thus rendering the society at large less prone to spreading the gene than it is to treat lots of people for opium addiction

[johnny861]

Originally Posted by xian

its easier in China to simply identify those with the genetic marker and terminate those pregnancies thus rendering the society at large less prone to spreading the gene than it is to treat lots of people for opium addiction

disturbing thought.

[PETA]

ominous even