6 ms·
How stress echoes down the generations
- mrsmee89 8y agoAs a grandchild of holocaust survivors this rings very true. I’ve always felt I had stress triggers that “didn’t belong to me” so to speak.
- ataturk 8y agoWouldn't this be true for anyone who survived WWII? In other words, a majority of the people on the planet, centering around Europe and the Far East? But every single Soviet citizen was negatively affected by a war that cost them 27M lives.
- collyw 8y agoGoing back a few generations I am sure the majority of people had some stressful situations in there lives.
- spraak 8y agoI also believe this is what African Americans are still experiencing, while maybe slavery was long ago to have been "worked out" of the genes, it was roughly just two or three generations ago that there was segregation, Jim Crow laws, lynchings etc.
- wycs 8y agoIf this is your explanation for disparate outcomes, it does not strike me as a good one. No population has gone through more stress than post-war Jewish immigrants yet their children were the most successful cohort in America. Chinese immigrants were subjected to horrific racism and yet they are far more successful than gentile whites on average. Whatever the explanation, Lysenkoist propagation of intergenerational trama is unlikely to be correct, though it may prove politically expedient.
- xstartup 8y agoJewish at least had an opportunity to migrate to other places. European atrocities in South Asia, for example, the engineered famine affected 40 million lives and 5 million dead.
- lifeformed 8y agoThe trauma olympics isn't usually a fruitful discussion, but I think it's worth pointing out that Holocaust survivors were from a single generation or two, while slavery in America existed for 240 years, so it might not be a fair comparison. And the level of racism Chinese immigrants faced is still of a much lower intensity than black Americans faced. I mean, even if you don't count the first 240 years of slavery, there's still the next hundred years of weekly extrajudicial executions in public by mobs.
- civilitty 8y agoHell, the whole "hard working" Asians stereotype was a racist attempt to discredit criticisms of racism towards African Americans. "Hey, look! We're not racist! If the blacks were as hard working as the yellows we wouldn't have a problem!" was literally their argument.
- ThrowawayR2 8y ago> Hell, the whole "hard working" Asians stereotype was a racist attempt to discredit criticisms of racism towards African Americans. Did you really just attempt to discredit the rather well documented history of industriousness of Asians and Asian-American immigrants in particular in order to further your political narrative?
- patrickg_zill 8y agoThe German men and women who are descendants of the raped and tortured German women, victims of the Red Army, which Solzhenitsyn wrote about, as well... I don't write this to be insulting, but to point out that untold millions of people were affected.
- watwut 8y agoPolish displaced people. Russians citizens who seen villages burned in cold winter as German army was doing their "cleaning up for settlements you are not even people" thing. By historical accounts, German army behavior in West was very bad and much worst on Easter front. If you are going to single out Red Army, lets also not forget the other armies in that war. (And yes, people affected by communist persecutions have their trauma too.)
- wirrbel 8y agoAs a german with a severly war-traumatized grandmother (who was a teenager back then and while we don't know in the family, it might have been rape) I first of all would like to note, that you should not point out the Red Army alone. The events were more complex than that. Then I would like to ask every one reading this, to support mental health care for their neighbours, but also for refugees and inhabitants of war-stricken countries. If you live in a democratic country, use your active right to vote to elect candidates promoting free mental health care. If these candidates don't exist, get involved in one of the political parties to push the issue into focus.
- dankohn1 8y agoAnd advocate not to cause massive health problems on children today: http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/trump-administration-separating-parents-and-children-at-border-1242280003606 http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/trump-administration-separ...
- slfnflctd 8y agoI couldn't agree more. There huge benefits to society as a whole in making sure everyone has opportunities to receive support in this area-- I wouldn't be surprised if they vastly outweigh whatever it costs to provide them. Everything from homelessness to school shootings could be reduced. There's already a stigma associated with seeking mental health services, and the costs on top of that make it a non-starter for many of the people who need it most.
- laretluval 8y agoSounds like they haven't yet shown (1) that the sperm characteristic is heritable in humans, nor (2) that it has any effect on human phenotype.
- logozy 8y agoA total of mere 28 samples unlikely to make a convencing result.
- malandrew 8y agoThis is a common pattern in all the epigenetic research I've seen thus far.
- technofiend 8y agoMakes me wonder how one accounts for people unavailable to interview because they've already died of stress-related causes.
- TACIXAT 8y agoAny reason why this case would diverge from the rule of ~30 being statistically relevant?
- RickJWagner 8y agoI think this is exactly backwards. My kids stress me out more than anything else. ;)
- TimTheTinker 8y agoI don’t have any problem with this kind of joke. Parenting can be incredibly stressful, and its difficulty varies widely.
- delbel 8y agoThis is a pseudo-science campaign attempt to justify multi-generation holocaust payout. Watch, there will be more articles calling for a "solution" to where next generation people get reparations due to this bogus science. Downvote all you want, this is a well thought out campaign.
- adamsea 8y agoOh yeah us Jews are just thrilled for any opportunity to cash in on the Holocaust ... /sarcasm