6 ms·

Study of Holocaust survivors finds trauma passed on to children's genes

80 points by tomhoward 11y ago

jokoon 11y ago
I have to say, my father doesn't have the happiest mood. Have to admit both his parents did not went to camps but were kept hidden, so I don't really know the metric used in that study. I did not live any of thing, but the slight idea of having people with my genetic heritage being treated like that frightens and depresses me deeply.
- efdee 11y ago
  Why limit that to people of your genetic heritage? Sounds like quite an elitist thing to say.
  - plonh 11y ago
    If your genetic heritage has never been the target of genocide, it is easy to maintain an emotional detachment.
    - reader5000 11y ago
      Willing to wager most "genetic heritages" on the planet have been targets of genocide in one form or another.
    - oldmanjay 11y ago
      What's easy is to make pronouncements about other people and the way they handle emotions, when you have literally no way of actually making those statements without imposing staggering amounts of your own bias.
  - ska 11y ago
    A more charitable reading would be that the poster is affected by the realization that people of their genetic heritage were recently treated that way, not that they are claiming it is especially bad somehow because of the people it happened to.
  - dethstar 11y ago
    Because it's the topic at hand?
  - DanBC 11y ago
    Some people don't have English as a first language. You should probably try harder to give their comments a charitable interpretation.
  - jokoon 11y ago
    Elitist? For something done by the nazis? Aren't you sure your critic is a little misplaced ?
Hermel 11y ago
Note that this is not about changing genes, but about exogenous tags that are passed on.
jeroen 11y ago
So Lamarck was right after all?
- pygy_ 11y ago
  To some extent, yes, but epigenetics won't AFAIK lead to speciation.
  - RockofStrength 11y ago
    Anything that changes behavior can eventually lead to speciation.
- ryangittins 11y ago
  Yes and no. Life experiences do not affect one's genes, but the way those genes are expressed. Though, I don't know if (and doubt) that distinction was known in his day.
- ddebernardy 11y ago
  One could argue he was in some sense, yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism#Epigenetic_Lamarckism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism#Epigenetic_Lamarcki...
BostonEnginerd 11y ago
There was a Radiolab episode that covered a similar story: http://www.radiolab.org/story/251885-you-are-what-your-grandpa-eats/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/251885-you-are-what-your-grand...
jghn 11y ago
While it could be entirely true there are a lot of problems here. Small sample size and lots of confounding factors for one. Also there are still things to figure out in terms of how best to study epigenetic effects, as seen here: http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/01/22/ije.dyr225.full http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/01/22/ije.d...
- emehrkay 11y ago
  Seems like it would be easier to measure the genetic trauma suffered by the decedents of the American Slave Trade
  - maratd 11y ago
    You would be quite a few generations away from the originating event. Here, they're studying the very next generation. Obviously the effect wears out over time or we would all have these markers ... somewhere at some point, all of our ancestors had a rough time.
methou 11y ago
With all respect, but does that means the back-story for Assassin's Creed could be true? Maybe someday we can do archeology by gene-sequencing?
Maascamp 11y ago
I wonder if this has implications for the higher levels of hypertension found specifically in African Americans.
tomhoward 11y ago
Here's a thought that's been nagging at me for a while... There is evidence [1] that PTSD is linked to increased incidence of physiological conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, thyroid disease, rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune illnesses. Given the number of people currently living whose recent ancestors experienced the trauma of war and oppression, I wonder if it could explain part of the growing incidence of these illnesses that we keep hearing is burdening the health systems of Western countries these days. The reason it's on my mind is due to my own experience. For a few years I've been struggling to get sound diagnosis and treatment for a fatigue illnesses that I now understand has been caused by auto-immunity. Conventional medicine offered little help, but since I've undertaken a treatment to remove subconscious traumas, my health has steadily improved, to the point where "normal" health seems very much within reach. The thing is, my illnesses can't really be explained by my own traumatic experiences alone. By which I mean, I've had a relatively comfortable, privileged life and I haven't had many experiences that others would consider highly traumatic, but from a young age I've always been highly sensitive and perceived traumas in situations that others would just take in their stride. But when I reflect on the fact that my parents and grandparents could all be described as having been in a mildly traumatised state, it makes sense that this tendency in me was inherited. Yes I get that I'm a sample size of one and it's hardly objective. But it feels an idea worthy of further consideration. I'm doing whatever lab tests I can do of inflammation, cardio markers, hormone levels etc, so I can do comparisons as I continue the trauma-release process. I'll also be interested to see how I fare in life on illnesses like arthritis, diabetes, heart disease and Alzheimer's, all of which are prevalent in my family. I'd love to hear from anyone researching this kind of thing. [1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1196/annals.1314.011/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1196/annals.1314.011/a...
- nebula 11y ago
  Do you mind pointing to any resources that can help in understanding pursuing trauma-release treatments. Thanks in advance.
  - kmundnic 11y ago
    I would recommend reading Code to Joy, by George Pratt and Peter Lambrou. It is an excellent book, that lets you understand how the mind works (basically, the relationship between conscious and unconscious mind), and how traumas affect our daily life. It also describes how to clear them out, and it has worked for me. The book has references on how that theory began with Roger Callahan at the end of the 1980's. Tapping the healer within is one of these books, which I would recommend if you're interested in the subject, but not as a guide to clear away your fears of your unconscious mind.
anti-shill 11y ago
I expect that poor urban kids from high crime neighborhoods have also experienced this sort of genetic damage...the government needs to pay these kids some sort of reparations, of course. This is america, and we will need to make them whole. Same principle applies to women and minorities. Racial/gender discrimination almost certainly leads to this sort of genetic damage. Again, we have a duty to make them whole.
- DanBC 11y ago
  You edited your comment. Your original comment was "victimology comes to genetics [...]"
  - anti-shill 11y ago
    have you been checked for dyslexia? I am concerned for you.
    - x0054 11y ago
      Why would you be concerned about someone who may have dyslexia?
- dang 11y ago
  Please don't troll here, and please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN. We're looking for thoughtful, respectful comments, not ideological flamebait.
blowski 11y ago
> “The gene changes in the children could only be attributed to Holocaust exposure in the parents,” said Yehuda. I don't know whether that quote is taken out of context, or is otherwise not representative of the people involved in this project, but that sentence makes me question the validity of the science involved. Clearly there are lots of possible explanations. Perhaps the genes were present anyway, and would have been passed on regardless of the parents' traumatic experiences. Perhaps being raised by parents who have been through a traumatic experience affected the children. Saying there is no other possible explanation doesn't sound very scientific.
- robotkilla 11y ago
  This jumped out at me as well - absolute statements are usually a sign of bad science or bad reporting.
- daenz 11y ago
  Especially since they don't mention controlling for social influence. Nor do they mention sampling the descendants of other people exposed to the war who were not necessarily victims. Not to mention that their sample size was 32.
  - omginternets 11y ago
    >Not to mention that their sample size was 32. No offense (really!), but this kind of criticism makes me suspect that you don't know much about research and statistics. Statistical power matters, not the sample size, per se. If you want to criticize the size of n, you have to tell us what makes you think they have insufficient statistical power (which will invariably involve estimating an effect size for us). Your previous points are well-taken, though.
    - loceng 11y ago
      If you have very solid controls in place then a sample size of 32 is much more substantial IMHO than if you're dealing with real-world environmental factors where you have very little control.
ken47 11y ago
From the article's summary of the study, it does not preclude the possibility that the tag was switched on in the children after birth. One would expect that experiencing trauma to the degree of the parents in the study would cause them to raise their children a substantially different environment than they would have otherwise. Since we already know that environment can influence the expression of genes, I don't see why this isn't advanced as, at least, an equally viable theory on why their children expressed similar genes.
toufka 11y ago
Epigenetics. It's the make-file for your genetic source code. Certain conditions can cause certain parts of your genetic code to be uncommented or commented-out. There are actually a number of different kinds of comments (histone modifications [1]) - each set of marks particular to a different compiler, in different contexts. And these comments/marks are copied with some fidelity to daughter-cells/children. So the genes themselves are not being heritably altered, rather the recipe for which gene is where, when can be subtly changed. But again, the same mechanisms that permit the change in expression of those genes during a lifetime can be subsequently changed in the next just as easily. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histone_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histone_code
- mattdeboard 11y ago
  So, metaprogramming?
  - cristianpascu 11y ago
    Compiler, rather.
  - asveikau 11y ago
    More like next time be sure to compile without -DTRAUMA. I knew that block inside #ifdef TRAUMA ... #endif was suspicious.
- squozzer 11y ago
  That's the analogy I was looking for.
imadeanaccount 11y ago
http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org/new/israel-pays-students-for-pro-israeli-social-media-propaganda/#.VCR7FGSwKkQ http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org/new/israel-pays... >Genetic changes stemming from the trauma suffered by Holocaust survivors are capable of being passed on to their children >The conclusion from a research team at New York’s Mount Sinai hospital led by Rachel Yehuda >Rachel Yehuda Stopped right there. A jew in America really has to do some serous mental gymnastics to stay in the oppression Olympics.. They are the richest per capita ethnic group in the United States and at less than 2% of the population they are vastly overrepresented in media, law, academia, banking, and anything else that is high status. jewish privilege? That's racist. Meanwhile every presidential contender will travel to the other side of the world to pay homage to their ruined temple. >the genetic study of 32 Jewish men and women >32 This article is quite funny.
imadeanaccount 11y ago
9,139 Palestinians have been killed by israel since September 29, 2000. 28,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel since 1967. 72,935 Palestinians have been injured by Israel since September 29, 2000. Are Palestinians subject to the same trauma or is this limited to people of jewish ancestry?
- gyardley 11y ago
  We don't know - they weren't the subject of the study, which in itself is subject to debate. In general, don't use the tu quoque fallacy to attempt to derail conversations. It's obnoxious and wastes everybody's time.
- prodigal_erik 11y ago
  > their children, who are known to have increased likelihood of stress disorders They started here because laymen had already noticed a pattern. Has anything similar been noticed in descendants of Palestinians? Does New York even have enough potential subjects for them to do the same study?
- jewbear48 11y ago
  Did you honestly create an account just to make this comment? Is your sole purpose in life to shill against Israel, I find it astounding.
  - imadeanaccount 11y ago
    Israel has paid shills. What is wrong with counter shilling? http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/08/14/israel-pay-students-propaganda_n_3755782.html http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/08/14/israel-pay-studen... This is your first comment... https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=jewbear48 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=jewbear48
- dang 11y ago
  We've banned this account. These are serious issues, but to show up on HN with both guns blazing and flame away is the worst way to raise them.
kingishb 11y ago
This is obviously super-interesting if true, but difficult to reason through without being able to see the paper or data. Does anyone have access to the full text? I don't belong to this field, but need to see the effect size [1] of methylation [2] to contextualize what's going on here. [1]: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3444174/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3444174/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_methylation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_methylation
gojomo 11y ago
This story seems to implicitly assume that damage to ancestors must mean damage to offspring, when in fact some of the epigenetic results suggest the opposite can also be true. That is, stress to ancestors can trigger changes which benefit offspring. A multigenerational study in Sweden found that when men experienced famine at a key young age, their grandchildren lived significantly longer, even after controlling for other factors. (OTOH, I believe the result was reversed for grandmothers.) Some coverage of that research: Radioloab podcast: http://www.radiolab.org/story/251885-you-are-what-your-grandpa-eats/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/251885-you-are-what-your-grand... Related book excerpt: http://io9.com/how-an-1836-famine-altered-the-genes-of-children-born-d-1200001177 http://io9.com/how-an-1836-famine-altered-the-genes-of-child...
x0054 11y ago
Does anyone have access to this paper [1]. The reporting around this paper, and the conclusions reached both by the authors and the media sound ridiculous considering the tiny sample group studied: 32 holocaust surviving parents, 22 children of those parents, and 8 parents / 9 children for control. Variations in such tiny sample groups have to be truly dramatic to be meaningful in any way, and even with dramatic variations you can't possibly make such bold statements as: "This is the first demonstration of transmission of pre-conception parental trauma to child associated with epigenetic changes in both generations." Now I am not saying that the underlying concept isn't possible. But I feel like this paper isn't properly questioned by the media or the scientific community, because to do so will some how be perceived as antisemitism. It feels wrong to me, I feel like the author is using the horrific events of the Holocaust to promote her scientific career, and that's wrong. [1] http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-3223(15)00652-6/fulltext http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-322...
- pascalmemories 11y ago
  It has long been discussed within the Jewish community that lots of children of survivors can be really screwed up - not just their parents. This sounds like an attempt to examine this to find something other than anecdotal evidence and to see if there is something more going on. However, so much time has passed, that getting good sample sizes is difficult (i.e. you need parent DNA from living parents as well as child DNA and there are now very few survivors left alive). The DNA science necessary for the study came along too late for there to be a good sample size still available. The research could have considerable application if it is found to hold true - there are many, many situations where we could be setting up future generations in need of help (e.g. Iraq, Syria to name just 2). If there is a genetic change component, gene therapy applications could be part of a better planned approach to address issues suffered in 20, 30 or more, years time.
  - charlieflowers 11y ago
    > It has long been discussed within the Jewish community that lots of children of survivors can be really screwed up - not just their parents. Does the Jewish community have any awareness of whether children of survivors who are raised by someone other than the survivors tend to be? In other words, can we (even anecdotally) begin to tease apart inheritance versus environment?
spike021 11y ago
I feel like I've mentioned it here before.. but in any case there's a pretty solid chance I inherited Essential Benign Tremors[0] from my grandfather, who survived the Holocaust in Germany (actually was drafted by the US and came back). [0] http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/essential-tremor/basics/definition/con-20034509 http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/essential-trem...
squozzer 11y ago
Genetic memory. If true, it would make evolution a more efficient process - the genes themselves change in the face of stress - than random mutation alone.
auton1 11y ago
A criticism of the paper this article is reporting: http://epgntxeinstein.tumblr.com/post/127416455028/over-interpreted-epigenetics-study-of-the-week http://epgntxeinstein.tumblr.com/post/127416455028/over-inte...

80 points by tomhoward 11y ago

I have to say, my father doesn't have the happiest mood. Have to admit both his parents did not went to camps but were kept hidden, so I don't really know the metric used in that study. I did not live any of thing, but the slight idea of having people with my genetic heritage being treated like that frightens and depresses me deeply.

efdee 11y ago
Why limit that to people of your genetic heritage? Sounds like quite an elitist thing to say.
- plonh 11y ago
  If your genetic heritage has never been the target of genocide, it is easy to maintain an emotional detachment.
  - reader5000 11y ago
    Willing to wager most "genetic heritages" on the planet have been targets of genocide in one form or another.
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    What's easy is to make pronouncements about other people and the way they handle emotions, when you have literally no way of actually making those statements without imposing staggering amounts of your own bias.
- ska 11y ago
  A more charitable reading would be that the poster is affected by the realization that people of their genetic heritage were recently treated that way, not that they are claiming it is especially bad somehow because of the people it happened to.
- dethstar 11y ago
  Because it's the topic at hand?
- DanBC 11y ago
  Some people don't have English as a first language. You should probably try harder to give their comments a charitable interpretation.
- jokoon 11y ago
  Elitist? For something done by the nazis? Aren't you sure your critic is a little misplaced ?

Hermel 11y ago

Note that this is not about changing genes, but about exogenous tags that are passed on.

jeroen 11y ago

So Lamarck was right after all?

pygy_ 11y ago
To some extent, yes, but epigenetics won't AFAIK lead to speciation.
- RockofStrength 11y ago
  Anything that changes behavior can eventually lead to speciation.
ryangittins 11y ago
Yes and no. Life experiences do not affect one's genes, but the way those genes are expressed. Though, I don't know if (and doubt) that distinction was known in his day.
ddebernardy 11y ago
One could argue he was in some sense, yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism#Epigenetic_Lamarckism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism#Epigenetic_Lamarcki...

BostonEnginerd 11y ago

There was a Radiolab episode that covered a similar story: http://www.radiolab.org/story/251885-you-are-what-your-grandpa-eats/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/251885-you-are-what-your-grand...

jghn 11y ago

While it could be entirely true there are a lot of problems here. Small sample size and lots of confounding factors for one. Also there are still things to figure out in terms of how best to study epigenetic effects, as seen here: http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/01/22/ije.dyr225.full http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/01/22/ije.d...

emehrkay 11y ago
Seems like it would be easier to measure the genetic trauma suffered by the decedents of the American Slave Trade
- maratd 11y ago
  You would be quite a few generations away from the originating event. Here, they're studying the very next generation. Obviously the effect wears out over time or we would all have these markers ... somewhere at some point, all of our ancestors had a rough time.

methou 11y ago

With all respect, but does that means the back-story for Assassin's Creed could be true? Maybe someday we can do archeology by gene-sequencing?

Maascamp 11y ago

I wonder if this has implications for the higher levels of hypertension found specifically in African Americans.

tomhoward 11y ago

Here's a thought that's been nagging at me for a while... There is evidence [1] that PTSD is linked to increased incidence of physiological conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, thyroid disease, rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune illnesses. Given the number of people currently living whose recent ancestors experienced the trauma of war and oppression, I wonder if it could explain part of the growing incidence of these illnesses that we keep hearing is burdening the health systems of Western countries these days. The reason it's on my mind is due to my own experience. For a few years I've been struggling to get sound diagnosis and treatment for a fatigue illnesses that I now understand has been caused by auto-immunity. Conventional medicine offered little help, but since I've undertaken a treatment to remove subconscious traumas, my health has steadily improved, to the point where "normal" health seems very much within reach. The thing is, my illnesses can't really be explained by my own traumatic experiences alone. By which I mean, I've had a relatively comfortable, privileged life and I haven't had many experiences that others would consider highly traumatic, but from a young age I've always been highly sensitive and perceived traumas in situations that others would just take in their stride. But when I reflect on the fact that my parents and grandparents could all be described as having been in a mildly traumatised state, it makes sense that this tendency in me was inherited. Yes I get that I'm a sample size of one and it's hardly objective. But it feels an idea worthy of further consideration. I'm doing whatever lab tests I can do of inflammation, cardio markers, hormone levels etc, so I can do comparisons as I continue the trauma-release process. I'll also be interested to see how I fare in life on illnesses like arthritis, diabetes, heart disease and Alzheimer's, all of which are prevalent in my family. I'd love to hear from anyone researching this kind of thing. [1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1196/annals.1314.011/abstract http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1196/annals.1314.011/a...

nebula 11y ago
Do you mind pointing to any resources that can help in understanding pursuing trauma-release treatments. Thanks in advance.
- kmundnic 11y ago
  I would recommend reading Code to Joy, by George Pratt and Peter Lambrou. It is an excellent book, that lets you understand how the mind works (basically, the relationship between conscious and unconscious mind), and how traumas affect our daily life. It also describes how to clear them out, and it has worked for me. The book has references on how that theory began with Roger Callahan at the end of the 1980's. Tapping the healer within is one of these books, which I would recommend if you're interested in the subject, but not as a guide to clear away your fears of your unconscious mind.

anti-shill 11y ago

I expect that poor urban kids from high crime neighborhoods have also experienced this sort of genetic damage...the government needs to pay these kids some sort of reparations, of course. This is america, and we will need to make them whole. Same principle applies to women and minorities. Racial/gender discrimination almost certainly leads to this sort of genetic damage. Again, we have a duty to make them whole.

DanBC 11y ago
You edited your comment. Your original comment was "victimology comes to genetics [...]"
- anti-shill 11y ago
  have you been checked for dyslexia? I am concerned for you.
  - x0054 11y ago
    Why would you be concerned about someone who may have dyslexia?
dang 11y ago
Please don't troll here, and please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN. We're looking for thoughtful, respectful comments, not ideological flamebait.

blowski 11y ago

> “The gene changes in the children could only be attributed to Holocaust exposure in the parents,” said Yehuda. I don't know whether that quote is taken out of context, or is otherwise not representative of the people involved in this project, but that sentence makes me question the validity of the science involved. Clearly there are lots of possible explanations. Perhaps the genes were present anyway, and would have been passed on regardless of the parents' traumatic experiences. Perhaps being raised by parents who have been through a traumatic experience affected the children. Saying there is no other possible explanation doesn't sound very scientific.

robotkilla 11y ago
This jumped out at me as well - absolute statements are usually a sign of bad science or bad reporting.
daenz 11y ago
Especially since they don't mention controlling for social influence. Nor do they mention sampling the descendants of other people exposed to the war who were not necessarily victims. Not to mention that their sample size was 32.
- omginternets 11y ago
  >Not to mention that their sample size was 32. No offense (really!), but this kind of criticism makes me suspect that you don't know much about research and statistics. Statistical power matters, not the sample size, per se. If you want to criticize the size of n, you have to tell us what makes you think they have insufficient statistical power (which will invariably involve estimating an effect size for us). Your previous points are well-taken, though.
  - loceng 11y ago
    If you have very solid controls in place then a sample size of 32 is much more substantial IMHO than if you're dealing with real-world environmental factors where you have very little control.

ken47 11y ago

From the article's summary of the study, it does not preclude the possibility that the tag was switched on in the children after birth. One would expect that experiencing trauma to the degree of the parents in the study would cause them to raise their children a substantially different environment than they would have otherwise. Since we already know that environment can influence the expression of genes, I don't see why this isn't advanced as, at least, an equally viable theory on why their children expressed similar genes.

toufka 11y ago

Epigenetics. It's the make-file for your genetic source code. Certain conditions can cause certain parts of your genetic code to be uncommented or commented-out. There are actually a number of different kinds of comments (histone modifications [1]) - each set of marks particular to a different compiler, in different contexts. And these comments/marks are copied with some fidelity to daughter-cells/children. So the genes themselves are not being heritably altered, rather the recipe for which gene is where, when can be subtly changed. But again, the same mechanisms that permit the change in expression of those genes during a lifetime can be subsequently changed in the next just as easily. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histone_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histone_code

mattdeboard 11y ago
So, metaprogramming?
- cristianpascu 11y ago
  Compiler, rather.
- asveikau 11y ago
  More like next time be sure to compile without -DTRAUMA. I knew that block inside #ifdef TRAUMA ... #endif was suspicious.
squozzer 11y ago
That's the analogy I was looking for.

imadeanaccount 11y ago

http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org/new/israel-pays-students-for-pro-israeli-social-media-propaganda/#.VCR7FGSwKkQ http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org/new/israel-pays... >Genetic changes stemming from the trauma suffered by Holocaust survivors are capable of being passed on to their children >The conclusion from a research team at New York’s Mount Sinai hospital led by Rachel Yehuda >Rachel Yehuda Stopped right there. A jew in America really has to do some serous mental gymnastics to stay in the oppression Olympics.. They are the richest per capita ethnic group in the United States and at less than 2% of the population they are vastly overrepresented in media, law, academia, banking, and anything else that is high status. jewish privilege? That's racist. Meanwhile every presidential contender will travel to the other side of the world to pay homage to their ruined temple. >the genetic study of 32 Jewish men and women >32 This article is quite funny.

imadeanaccount 11y ago

9,139 Palestinians have been killed by israel since September 29, 2000. 28,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel since 1967. 72,935 Palestinians have been injured by Israel since September 29, 2000. Are Palestinians subject to the same trauma or is this limited to people of jewish ancestry?

gyardley 11y ago
We don't know - they weren't the subject of the study, which in itself is subject to debate. In general, don't use the tu quoque fallacy to attempt to derail conversations. It's obnoxious and wastes everybody's time.
prodigal_erik 11y ago
> their children, who are known to have increased likelihood of stress disorders They started here because laymen had already noticed a pattern. Has anything similar been noticed in descendants of Palestinians? Does New York even have enough potential subjects for them to do the same study?
jewbear48 11y ago
Did you honestly create an account just to make this comment? Is your sole purpose in life to shill against Israel, I find it astounding.
- imadeanaccount 11y ago
  Israel has paid shills. What is wrong with counter shilling? http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/08/14/israel-pay-students-propaganda_n_3755782.html http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/08/14/israel-pay-studen... This is your first comment... https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=jewbear48 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=jewbear48
dang 11y ago
We've banned this account. These are serious issues, but to show up on HN with both guns blazing and flame away is the worst way to raise them.

kingishb 11y ago

This is obviously super-interesting if true, but difficult to reason through without being able to see the paper or data. Does anyone have access to the full text? I don't belong to this field, but need to see the effect size [1] of methylation [2] to contextualize what's going on here. [1]: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3444174/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3444174/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_methylation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_methylation

gojomo 11y ago

This story seems to implicitly assume that damage to ancestors must mean damage to offspring, when in fact some of the epigenetic results suggest the opposite can also be true. That is, stress to ancestors can trigger changes which benefit offspring. A multigenerational study in Sweden found that when men experienced famine at a key young age, their grandchildren lived significantly longer, even after controlling for other factors. (OTOH, I believe the result was reversed for grandmothers.) Some coverage of that research: Radioloab podcast: http://www.radiolab.org/story/251885-you-are-what-your-grandpa-eats/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/251885-you-are-what-your-grand... Related book excerpt: http://io9.com/how-an-1836-famine-altered-the-genes-of-children-born-d-1200001177 http://io9.com/how-an-1836-famine-altered-the-genes-of-child...

x0054 11y ago

Does anyone have access to this paper [1]. The reporting around this paper, and the conclusions reached both by the authors and the media sound ridiculous considering the tiny sample group studied: 32 holocaust surviving parents, 22 children of those parents, and 8 parents / 9 children for control. Variations in such tiny sample groups have to be truly dramatic to be meaningful in any way, and even with dramatic variations you can't possibly make such bold statements as: "This is the first demonstration of transmission of pre-conception parental trauma to child associated with epigenetic changes in both generations." Now I am not saying that the underlying concept isn't possible. But I feel like this paper isn't properly questioned by the media or the scientific community, because to do so will some how be perceived as antisemitism. It feels wrong to me, I feel like the author is using the horrific events of the Holocaust to promote her scientific career, and that's wrong. [1] http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-3223(15)00652-6/fulltext http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/S0006-322...

pascalmemories 11y ago
It has long been discussed within the Jewish community that lots of children of survivors can be really screwed up - not just their parents. This sounds like an attempt to examine this to find something other than anecdotal evidence and to see if there is something more going on. However, so much time has passed, that getting good sample sizes is difficult (i.e. you need parent DNA from living parents as well as child DNA and there are now very few survivors left alive). The DNA science necessary for the study came along too late for there to be a good sample size still available. The research could have considerable application if it is found to hold true - there are many, many situations where we could be setting up future generations in need of help (e.g. Iraq, Syria to name just 2). If there is a genetic change component, gene therapy applications could be part of a better planned approach to address issues suffered in 20, 30 or more, years time.
- charlieflowers 11y ago
  > It has long been discussed within the Jewish community that lots of children of survivors can be really screwed up - not just their parents. Does the Jewish community have any awareness of whether children of survivors who are raised by someone other than the survivors tend to be? In other words, can we (even anecdotally) begin to tease apart inheritance versus environment?

spike021 11y ago

I feel like I've mentioned it here before.. but in any case there's a pretty solid chance I inherited Essential Benign Tremors[0] from my grandfather, who survived the Holocaust in Germany (actually was drafted by the US and came back). [0] http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/essential-tremor/basics/definition/con-20034509 http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/essential-trem...

squozzer 11y ago

Genetic memory. If true, it would make evolution a more efficient process - the genes themselves change in the face of stress - than random mutation alone.

auton1 11y ago

A criticism of the paper this article is reporting: http://epgntxeinstein.tumblr.com/post/127416455028/over-interpreted-epigenetics-study-of-the-week http://epgntxeinstein.tumblr.com/post/127416455028/over-inte...