Chapter 6
The “established fact” in psychiatry that schizophrenia is caused in large part by disordered genes speaks volumes about the discipline’s failure to critically assess the methods and assumptions of its own research. In countless textbooks in psychiatry and the related fields, we find the same uncritical acceptance of the conclusions of twin and adoption researchers. Psychiatry needs these conclusions in order to maintain itself as a viable and legitimate branch of medicine. Genetic theories also aid the interests of corporations and politicians, and the interests of the drug companies (“Big Pharma”), to locate the causes of psychological dysfunction and psychosis within people’s bodies and brains.505 John Read and his colleagues described the position of some critics, who have argued that one role of modern psychiatry “is to sweep up the social casualties of Western industrialized societies by re-defining their difficulties as individual, biologically-based ‘illnesses’…and applying ‘treatments’ that silence and disable people even further.”506 It is not surprising, therefore, that the major corporations and governments that help produce these “social casualties” continue to channel research funding in the genetic and biological direction.
The main finding of psychiatric molecular genetic research is that genes that cause or predispose for the major psychiatric disorders do not appear to exist. The ongoing failure to make confirmed discoveries of susceptibility genes for schizophrenia is not the result of a “missing heritability” problem, but of psychiatry’s “missing critical analysis of family, twin, and adoption research” problem. In 2003, Nobel Laureate James D. Watson was “confident that during the upcoming years the heritage of the double helix will help psychiatrists, neuroscientists, and behavioral scientists unlock the many secrets of the mind and brain.”507 Since then (and well before), leading psychiatric genetic researchers’ assumptions, decisions, and claims have been tested under the microscope of molecular genetic research. Contrary to predictions, the apparently negative results are now in.
We saw psychiatric geneticist Stephen Faraone write in 2013 of the decades-long “nonreplication curse” plaguing psychiatric molecular genetic research. The “curse” that Faraone described is merely the scientific likelihood that genes for the major psychiatric disorders do not exist. This is a cause for celebration, as society can now part ways with diversionary genetic and medical approaches, and can instead focus on environmental causes, social interventions, non-medical treatment approaches, and most of all prevention.
The evidence in favor of environmental causes, coupled with the lack of evidence in favor of genetic causes, supports a psychological/sociological/environmental explanation of schizophrenia and psychosis similar to Read and colleagues’ Traumagenic Neurodevelopmental (TM) model. With the qualification that this model focuses perhaps too much on brain functioning, and therefore could be used by others as a backdoor route to the brain disorder position, the TM model provides a workable environmental alternative to currently dominant genetically focused explanations of schizophrenia and psychosis. Clearly, the causes of these conditions, and of other forms of psychological disturbance and dysfunction, lie outside of the body.
In defense of mainstream psychiatry and the validity of its disorders, and in response to psychiatry’s critics, Kety famously wrote in 1974 that his studies showed that “if schizophrenia is a myth, it is a myth with a strong genetic component!”508 Schizophrenia molecular genetic research was relatively new in those days, but we can now adjust Kety’s position to bring it in line with critical analysis and current scientific results: If schizophrenia is a genetic disorder, it is a genetic disorder with a strong mythical component!
It is telling that the APA, which since 1970 has created nearly 30 “task forces” to examine various issues, has never created one charged with performing an in-depth critical evaluation of the methods and assumptions of psychiatric family, twin, and adoption studies.509 Because the schizophrenia gene-discovery bubble is in the process of bursting, the creation of such a task force would be the order of the day in a vibrant scientific field in a healthy society, but would be off-limits in a stagnant field corrupted by a very cozy relationship with Big Pharma, in a similarly corrupted corporate-controlled government and society.510
In my first “genetics of schizophrenia” publication, I concluded in 1999, “Based on the weight of the evidence, it is predicted here that a gene for schizophrenia will not be found, because it does not exist.”511 Nearly two decades later, researchers continue to struggle in their attempts to uncover these presumed genes. The search, however, cannot go on forever. At the beginning of this book we saw a leading molecular genetic researcher ask, “Why is it that the molecular genetics of schizophrenia has seemingly been forever poised on the brink of great breakthroughs?” The best answer that I can provide is a very simple one: “Because genes (genetic variants) that cause or predispose for schizophrenia and psychosis most likely do not exist.”
The time has come to halt the massive failure that has characterized schizophrenia molecular genetic research, and to thoroughly reassess what critics have always said are the severely flawed family, twin, and adoption studies that inspired and helped justify this research. As the mainstream authors of a 2008 article on the “facts” of schizophrenia concluded, “A reconsideration of our basic strategies and fundamental assumptions may be in order.”512 Indeed, this is long overdue. The environments that cause “schizophrenia” and psychosis, and the psychologically harmful family, social, political, and economic conditions that produce them, must become the main focus of research and societal attention.
Acknowledgements
I dedicate this e-book to the memory of my late colleagues Steve Baldwin, David H. Jacobs, and Loren Mosher (video), who worked tirelessly to challenge medical model approaches in psychiatry. Several people provided important assistance while I was writing this book. I have benefitted greatly from the knowledge, support, advice, and updates provided by the members of a critical genetics e-mail group, unofficially known as “The Forum.” I thank M. C. Jones and Ken Richardson for reading an earlier version of the entire manuscript, and for providing valuable and insightful feedback. In addition, I thank Norbert Wetzel and Roar Fosse for reading and commenting on several key chapters. Others who have lent support over the years, and helped formulate some of the ideas expressed in this book, include Claudia Chaufan, David Cohen, and Jonathan Leo.
All conclusions and opinions expressed in this book are entirely my own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of people who helped along the way. In addition, any errors are entirely my responsibility.