UPDATE: Here is why I so strongly rejected the $1.2 million study of Alaskan Natives Genetic predisposition to a so called Depession Gene:
Quote from :
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/17/science/17depress.html?_r=2&emc=eta1
[[[ One of the most celebrated findings in modern psychiatry that a single
gene helps determine ones risk of depression in response to a divorce, a
lost job or another serious reversal ? has not held up to scientific
scrutiny, researchers reported Tuesday.]]]
The only result would be throwing away a lot of money better used elsewhere and branding a people with a false handicap which would impair their getting good jobs.
by Janet Crain
I am really upset by Senator Lisa Murkowski's letter sent to Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius asking for money to "study" an Alaskan Native problem's perceived genetic cause. This is playing right into Obama and Sebelius's hand. Brand these people forever as having FLAWED genes and being unable to help themselves. Make them more dependent on the government. Their world was destroyed by civilization. That would depress anybody. They were doing just fine before. Now they can't hunt seals or fully participate in their heritage.* So they turn to drugs and alcohol and suicide. Is this the answer to culture genocide? To declare an entire people as genetically predisposed to fail? So Big Brother government can come in and take over their lives? This is Saul Alinskyism at its best. He would be proud.
Throwing more money at the problem won't help. Infanticizing the population won't help.
"The study was proposed by the U.S. Arctic Research Commission and, according to Murkowski, would “seek to determine the specific genes that contribute to major depressive disorders and alcohol abuse leading to targeted treatment options for Alaska Natives.”
What's your opinion?
Murkowski calls for $1.2 million suicide study
Posted: May 27, 2009 - 1:45 pm
Sen. Lisa Murkowski is calling on Secretary of Health & Human Services to fund a $1.2 million study aimed at reduce the towering suicide rate among Alaska Natives.
Click here to read the letter Murkowski sent today to Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. (And click here for our recent story on northwest Alaska suicide.)
The study was proposed by the U.S. Arctic Research Commission and, according to Murkowski, would “seek to determine the specific genes that contribute to major depressive disorders and alcohol abuse leading to targeted treatment options for Alaska Natives.”
Commission Chairman Mead Treadwell pushed for the study at an Indian Affairs Committee meeting in February:
The mental health problem cries out for research. Over the past two decades, the Indian Health Service and Alaska government have tried a variety of clinical and social work methods to improve Alaska Native mental health. They simply are not working.
Alaska Native mental health problems remain far more severe than the general population, and Natives in the Arctic experience a startling higher incidence, not only of suicide, but also of depression, alcoholism and mental illness.
Suicide is only the tip of the iceberg.
Many decisions to permit "updates" of methods appear to recognize that a strictly enforced time dimension for tradition may place unrealistic expectations on those engaging in otherwise traditional activities. For example, some age-old practices are now prohibited by law. Both state and federal courts have determined that individuals should not be penalized for employing "modern" methods where some aspect of their otherwise traditional activity is now prohibited. A case examining the Alaska Native handicraft exemption to the Marine Mammal Protection Act, Didrickson v. United States Department of the Interior,76 is the clearest illustration of this principle. The record in the case demonstrated that Alaska Natives had made many uses of sea otters before the occupation of the area by Russians in the late 1700s.77 After the United States purchased Alaska following more than a century of intensive hunting of sea otters, the Fur Seal Treaty of 1910 prohibited all hunting of the animals.78 The MMPA, passed in 1972, continued protections for the sea otter but included an Alaska Native exemption, which allowed takings of the animals by any local Indian, Aleut, or Eskimo to create authentic native articles "in the exercise of traditional native handicrafts."79 The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ("FWS") subsequently issued regulations defining authentic native articles as those "commonly produced on or before December 21, 1972,"80 the date the MMPA took effect, and providing that items created from sea otter pelts did not meet the exemption because "Alaskan natives have apparently not commonly sold handicrafts or clothing from sea otters within living memory."81 [*pg 182] When FWS agents seized articles of clothing made from sea otter pelts from Marina Katelnikoff, an Aleut,82 she sued, but the district court upheld the regulation.83 After this decision, FWS agents seized a parka and hat from Boyd Didrickson, a Tlingit, claiming that these items were not traditional because they included metal snaps and zippers.84 In a suit brought by Didrickson and joined by Katelnikoff, the district court reconsidered what constituted a traditional item under the statute.85 The court held that a finding that sea otter products were not traditional native handicrafts
is based upon a strained interpretation of the word "traditional" . . . . [T]he Government's position is that . . . "traditional" native handicrafts are only those items commonly produced for commercial sale within "living memory" before 1972. Hence the regulation creates an artificial time period from roughly 1900 through 1972 within which the search for traditional Alaskan native articles is limited. This rationale turns on its head any ordinary conception of the word "traditional."8
http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?19+Alaska+L.+Rev.+167
© Janet Crain
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