Posted by jamestheyonger on November 27, 2005, at 11:28:46
In reply to Re: where to get Serotonin Transporter gene testing? » jamestheyonger, posted by Tomatheus on November 27, 2005, at 1:48:09
"I did not say in my post that I think people should be scanned for the genes related to mental illness from birth."
I was not agreeing or disagreeing with your post or anyone's post on this thread, just posting my general thoughts. I should of started a post without the "In reply to" part.
"Yes, getting from a protein to a disease is often a multi-step process. But wouldn't it be better if psychiatrists at least had some idea as to how this process begins (the presence or absence of a protein), as opposed to knowing nothing about it whatsoever?"
We know very little about the causes and processes of mental illness, let alone how things work from the ground up, i.e. starting at the protein level.
"And about the correlations between genes and diseases, particular genetic variants *have* shown statistically significant correlations with many diseases, including psychiatric illnesses. If you were to read research reports of genetic association studies, that is what you would find. On what basis do you dispute these research findings?"
Common sense. Having a gene does not guarantee getting the disease linked to it, in all cases.
The specific protein a gene encodes for may cause may conditions. You cannot say a gene causes a disease, only that it makes you more likely to get it.The other problem here is psycho meds are non-specific, they work for many different mental illnesses, and psycho meds are very often not well tolerated. Clearly this board illustrates this fact. It is more a question of which med you tolerate first and then hopefully that it works.
If we had more specific meds and really
understood the causes and processes of mental illness a specific a diagnoses would be very helpful. Today it is not.
poster:jamestheyonger
thread:582481
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20051126/msgs/582673.html