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Evidence that addictive behaviors have links with ancient retroviral infection
- woliveirajr 8y agoEvery time I find interesting (and frighting) that we are nothing but a collection of ourselves and virus and bacterias, written down to our DNA and RNA or living together with close dependence deep in our guts (literally). Going further, a lot of what we do unconciously is just what a virus or something else "did" to survive or spread in the past, and our free will isn't that free... Edit: "did" wasn't meaning that a specific goal was set, for example, but just that the survival rate was better for certain configuration of atoms
- hellofunk 8y agoIt's also revealing how the unique ability of humans to overcome their fundamental biological nature can be quite impressive and inspiring. Humans have many natural tendencies that are not socially accepted, and better behavior can be learned and tendencies suppressed. Addicts and alcoholics can turn their lives around, even though they remain addicts for life.
- danharaj 8y ago> It's also revealing how the unique ability of humans to overcome their fundamental biological nature can be quite impressive and inspiring. That ability is itself part of the fundamental biological nature of humans, or whatever. The way you phrased it suggests a Cartesian dualistic interpretation.
- hellofunk 8y agoI have heard it frequently mentioned by interesting scientists (most recently, by Neil DeGrasse Tyson) that this ability to live against natural biological tendencies is unique for humans among the rest of the animal kingdom. So while it may be fundamental to humans, it is not apparently fundamental to the general biology of the world, and humans appear to be an interesting exception.
- lovich 8y agoDogs do it, albeit with human help. Considering that humans that grew up alone, ie. feral, seem to have no self control either I would think that dogs get to count too
- hellofunk 8y agoCan you give an example of dog behavior that does this? I'm curious.
- dfee 8y agoHere’s that behavior on display: https://www.reddit.com/r/rarepuppers/comments/9ime34/heckin_gud_girle_resists_temptashun/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rarepuppers/comments/9ime34/heckin_...
- lovich 8y agoNot sure why you are being downvoted. This link is one of the recent examples I was thinking of. The dog has been taught to not eat the food even when a human isn't around protecting the food. That requires ignoring one part of its biology for other benefits.
- toasterlovin 8y agoColor me skeptical of the idea that humans can really go against the grain of their evolved instincts. What seems much more likely is: 1) A large subset of people possess instincts that were successful for reproduction in the ancestral environment, but are no longer so. See also plummeting birth rates despite being at the historical peak in terms of access to resources for the average person (in the developed world, at least). 2) Some people's evolved instincts are to play a long game based on building reputation and then leveraging that reputation over the long term, rather than pursuing immediate wants and desires. Such an instinct will produce a lot of behavior that seems out of line with a naive interpretation of how we "should" be evolved to behave.
- coldtea 8y ago>Addicts and alcoholics can turn their lives around, even though they remain addicts for life. The "addicts for life" is an American puritan view (by AA and other such groups) -- not some scientific fact. Certainly not the view everywhere in the world. You can have an alcoholic of 5-10 years that recovered and can still enjoy the occasional drink just fine without getting back to regular drinking.
- manmal 8y agoMost institutions don’t want to let their clients go—why should AA be any different.
- dustingetz 8y agoi think you have it backwards- institutions that don’t self sustain, don’t survive.
- mercer 8y agoThe more specific statements about addicts become, the more cautious I tend to be. That said, I do at least agree that your quote is rather particular to AA, and not shared by other programs, like SMART. The reason I hesitate to dismiss the AA view is that it strikes me as quite possible that, for a subset of addicts, any kind of hope of moderation can be disastrous. The way I see it, a less dichotomous perspective such as that of SMART is a better starting point than the 'once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic' approach of AA. And if SMART doesn't work, AA might very well be the only solution left.
- neom 8y agoJust read about ibogaine if you'd like to learn about how possible and easy "curing" addiction can be. :)
- x220 8y agoWe aren't just a product of that, we are also a product of human sexual selection and epigenetic inheritance of individually acquired traits. Many of your important traits (such as general intelligence) were acquired in part by conscious processes by your ancestors.
- ergothus 8y agoThat's a bit circular...I may choose to breed with someone, but i do that because I find them attractive (because DNA tells me what is attractive), because my (known in humans to be inaccurate) risk assessment says it is worth it, etc. Plus, of the countless decisions I make every day, almost none of them are conscious. I can retroactively justify them as if they had been, but studies show we are far less conscious thinkers than we think we are. Ultimately, until we resolve the mind-body problem, we cant say that our decisions are based on more than a chaotic soup of interacting proteins and electrical sparks that are only marginally distinct from our environment.
- milesvp 8y agoSo, while yes, we have lots of fmri data that suggests our mind makes decisions for us, then convinces us that we made the decision conciously. I suspect it's a mistake to take this to the logical conclusion that we can make no conscious decisions. Even if consciousness is a complete illusion that our mind fabricated for us, we still seem to have some control over our reactions. I say this as someone who is teaching my children better reactions to what life throws at them, and similarly having to mediate my own responses to mistakes they make. Even if all this is happening at the margin, that seems to be enough for us to have some profound differences in how successful we are at navigating life.
- ergothus 8y ago> I suspect it's a mistake to take this to the logical conclusion that we can make no conscious decisions. And I don't! I consider it unproven, but a duality option definitely remains an option. Plus, there's always the default excuse that if I assume consciousness is reality when I can't in fact decide, well, then I can't be blamed for coming to that conclusion :) That said, I think we really need to pay attention to how many "conscious" decisions we don't bother to be conscious for. I have a personal theory that consciousness is a state that is generally invoked only when the mind doesn't have a preset behavior - consciousness is invoked to ponder "what if" and decide what to do. Once we have prescribed behavior, consciousness shuts down. Thus, we might be "conscious" for only a few hours or even less in an average day. If so, we CAN be self-aware more often, but it takes effort. Side Note: This theory is based in part on the idea that there's an advantage in minimizing conscious time - be that caloric requirements or an innate danger of being too aware. I've recently read some claims that hurt the caloric argument (brains are high caloric things, but that doesn't mean consciousness requires more calories) but the innate dangers of overthinking remain strong but vague and anecdotal. Finding ways to make and support this theory without lapsing into it being an automatic (and thus not trigging awareness) response gets more tricky each time :)
- EGreg 8y agoIs that like saying “we are nothing but atoms”? I agree that atoms are necessary, but how do we know they are sufficient for consciousness? Can you prove the “nothing but” part?
- benmowa 8y agoReminds me of one of my favorite books titled: Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from Our Brains to Black Holes, by Charles Seife One item discussed in the book that we as humans may just be a transport method for the data within DNA to survive time. Because without some replication it would get trapped and cease to exist.
- paulryanrogers 8y agoThe Selfish Gene (Dawkins) actually explores the idea that organisms began as DNA replicating 'machines'.
- roywiggins 8y agoAll eukaryotic mitochondria probably used to be free-living organisms too.
- chiefalchemist 8y agoWe are code. And often buggy code at that. Yet it's the random and imperfections that allow us to - for better or worse - persist.
- qwerty456127 8y ago> Every time I find interesting (and frighting) that we are nothing but a collection of ourselves and virus and bacterias, written down to our DNA and RNA or living together with close dependence deep in our guts (literally). That's our bodies, not us. "Every time I find interesting (and fighting)" that people believe they are nothing but a collection of cells, chemicals and feelings. Most people (outside the audience of the HN perhaps) don't even recognize that the feelings are actually the chemicals and have little to do even with the objective reality, needless to say with their true self. Believing you are your body is almost the same as believing that you are your car or your GitHub account. That's not we, that's our bodies, our "cars" with baggage (memories etc) in them, in our true self "we are all Kosh" © Overwhelming majority of people just live in permanent "rubber hand illusion". Getting rid of the illusion and recalling who you actually are is, however, easy as 1-2-3: 1. get cousciously aware of your emotions and thoughts, distance from them and obseve them 2. turn your inner gaze from them to the direction of where do you feel you observe them from 3. recognize that what you see there (it looks like just nothing, just conscious "empty space") is the actual you and you will never be able to "unsee' that. One doesn't need any kind of religion or spirituality to realize this (although it actually is taught in the Tibetan religious tradition of Dzogchen), it is as simple as realizing the rubber hand is not a part of your body.
- cgio 8y agoAre we not a little bit our car and our github account though? Growing up I wondered whether you could peel the banana all the way to its core of nothingness.
- qwerty456127 8y agoMy recommendation is to keep wondering. As for me it took me about 30 years of wondering before I've suddenly found it (by stumbling upon this fairly fun Buddhist monk lecture[1] while being extremely depressed and afraid and searching through YouTube looking for some psychological technique to relieve that). Whatever what I've found is from the philosophic or spiritual point of view, from the pragmatic point of view it seems an extremely powerful key to emotional well-being. AFAIK there is a fair amount of scientific research effort taking place around mindfulness and other Buddhist stuff, perhaps sooner or later this is going to draw some scientific attention too. By the way, it seems at least some scientifically-minded people happen to come to similar ideas occasionally, e.g. I've recently stumbled upon similar concepts in a book by Itzhak Bentov and was delighted by his scientific manner of exploration of the question of "life, universe, and everything". [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frQVcizEkmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frQVcizEkmI
- rfinney 8y agoLink to PNAS research paper: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/09/19/1811940115 http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/09/19/1811940115 Human Endogenous Retrovirus-K HML-2 integration within RASGRF2 is associated with intravenous drug abuse and modulates transcription in a cell-line model Not all humans have the same HK2 viruses in their genomes. Here we show that one specific uncommon HK2, which lies close to a gene involved in dopaminergic activity in the brain, is more frequently found in drug addicts and thus is significantly associated with addiction. We experimentally show that HK2 can manipulate nearby genes. Our study provides strong evidence that uncommon HK2 can be responsible for unappreciated pathogenic burden, and thus underlines the health importance of exploring the phenotypic roles of young, insertionally polymorphic HK2 integrations in human populations. ... Based on our cell-line experiments, we suggest that RASGRF2-int leads to enhancement of dopaminergic activity through higher expression of the first exons of RASGRF2, which then results in increased potential for addiction.
- wil421 8y agoDoes this mean you could be tested for the specific gene?
- subcosmos 8y agoAbout 20% of the human genome is endogenous retroviruses. We've all got them, and there is significant evidence that they become more active in old age, and may be a factor in dementia and other illnesses.
- nsajko 8y agoThey are also essential to forming the placenta: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HERV-W https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HERV-W https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HERV-FRD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HERV-FRD
- ZainRiz 8y agoFact check: It's more like 5-8% according to Wikipedia. Still a significant number. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_retrovirus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_retrovirus
- lisper 8y agoI have some bad news for you: your perception of free will is a by-product of your ignorance of how your brain works. Every decision you think you make is actually just a bunch of neurons firing, and those neurons were built by your DNA.
- nardi 8y agoNo one actually believes this, including you. You may say you do, and even think you do, but you don’t. Everyone acts as if they and others around them possess free will. We act that way because that’s what we believe. Honestly, I don’t think we understand enough about consciousness and how it arises from physical brains/bodies to make such an extraordinary claim like “there is no free will,” when the entire history of human thought and philosophy presupposes that there is.
- subcosmos 8y agoThey don't actually believe it. Deterministic processes in their brain are making them THINK they believe it.
- WilliamEdward 8y agoThere's literally no way to know whether this is true or not, so it's not worth discussing as if any one of us knows what the truth is. If you feel like you have free will, that's important. If you feel like you don't, oh well, but don't let your beliefs interfere with other people's choices (or their deterministic actions, in this case).
- pjc50 8y agoThe point is that this is a distinction without a (usable) difference. "Free will" is an ill-conditioned question that comes from dualist assumptions.
- buboard 8y ago> as if they and others around them possess free will. How would we "act as if they don't" ?
- sandworm101 8y agoSo what does this say about all the studies on rats, dogs, and all the other animals we have been using to study addiction? The rats that choose cocaine over food, are they running a different retrovirus?
- thaumaturgy 8y agoThe researchers found that the presence of RASGRF2 in their sample populations went from 6% to 14% and 9.5% to 34% when comparing controls to chronic drug abusers. So this means that addiction is a complex, multi-factor condition, and these researchers may have identified another factor. People with this gene may be predisposed to addictive behaviors but not behave that way for any number of environmental or other reasons; likewise, people without the gene may still develop addictive behaviors. The researchers didn't study rats or dogs, so there isn't much in the way of evidence for this gene's presence in those species.
- joncrane 8y agoThere's a guy who did a drug abuse study on rats but not locked in cages. his theory was that being locked in a cage was different than being in a social environment. So he built a habitat where rats could socialize with each other, use hamster wheels, and run around obstacles. In this population he found that almost NONE of the rats did harmful amounts of the narcotics-laced water. (He was using opiates as his "drug of choice.") So his theory is that a) many animal models of addiction are wrong because they use animals in very confined spaces b) maybe people who feel "trapped" in their life are more prone to developing addiction, and we should be treating addiction as a social disease.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- twodave 8y agoThere are so many more things than substances to be addicted to. Psychological dependence on certain behaviors can be just as strong as physical dependence on a substance. It looks like this study is focused on drug addiction which on its own is really intriguing, but I wonder if there would be any evidence in the human genome to predict behavioral addiction.
- MrEfficiency 8y agoI found that I'm addicted to weed, but not harmful drugs. Alcohol ruins your day. I can be productive on weed and/or caffeine. Both of them get work done. I believe I'm addicted to the productivity, when I take them outside of a work environment, I want to work. At what point is this positive reinforced habits?
- arbitrage 8y agoYou're not addicted to weed. Addiction really has a lot to do with making bad decisions in your life to keep doing the addictive behaviour. If its not negatively impacting your life, and it's not interfering with relationships and obligations, you're not addicted.
- coleifer 8y agoI think addiction is: you can't moderate usage even when you want to, and can't stay stopped even when you want to.
- leesec 8y agoThat's one definition I guess. I don't think there's anything inherently negative about the definition of addiction though. People can be addicted to lots of good things.
- Communitivity 8y agoThis so reminds me of the Asherah virus in the great book SnowCrash by Neal Stephenson. That book is still one of my favorite SFF books ever.
- jostmey 8y agoI see nothing here that suggests the link is causative. It could very well be that the toll of being an addict compromises the immune system leading to conditions that most people never get.
- asimpletune 8y agoI think they would have to have a separate, additional experiment to rule out a causal relation.
- jostmey 8y agoIt's not hard to test this hypothesis. All they have to do is look if the elderly show the same pattern as addicts. If they do, it suggest that a weakened immune system leaves the body vulnerable.
- mcfunk 8y agoIt's almost as if evidence continues to mount that addiction is a health issue and should be treated as such, rather than as a matter of criminality. For anyone interested in further reading on the topic I highly recommend information available from the Institute For Addiction Study (https://www.theinstituteforaddictionstudy.org/ https://www.theinstituteforaddictionstudy.org/).
- nirelCALBO 8y agour mom gay
- mc32 8y agoCertain aspects? Sure. All aspects? No. I don’t mind the buying the use and the minor incidentsl things. But if the addiction causes harm, be it physical, material or other major impacts on others, then it becomes both a health issue and a criminsl issue (stealing, hit and runs, deception, and obviously more). But yes, let’s try and treat it first rather than seek punishment first.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- crawfordcomeaux 8y agoPunishment runs counter to all forms of sustainable learning, according to the science of learning how to learn. Let's lovingly apply science to criminalization of people being human, rather than criminalizing human behavior. Let's not seek to punish. Let's start exploring other solutions spaces.
- mc32 8y agoLet’s say you havd someone in the Army of some country, any country, and that soldier does heinous things contrary than that allowed by internstional convention on clearly a civilian population, let’s say, do we still say, “oh, hey, they were high, it’s an illness, let’s treat them and after done, let’s get them back in the army”.
- FabHK 8y agoThis brings home the point Sam Harris makes often in his writing and blog (and books [1]): Our subjective experience of free will and being in control is largely an illusion. I used to find that very depressing, but now made peace with compatibilism (the notion that determinism and free will are compatible) [2][3]. Sam Harris objects to compatibilism: both argue that determinism is true, but Harris thinks that thus we have no free will, while compatibilists argue that we still have the "free will worth having" (see the book by Dennett [4]). Harris and Dennett had an insightful podcast/debate on that [5]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/books/review/free-will-by-sam-harris.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/books/review/free-will-by... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism [3] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/ [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbow_Room_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbow_Room_(book) [5] https://samharris.org/podcasts/free-will-revisited/ https://samharris.org/podcasts/free-will-revisited/
- Kenji 8y agoI don't know why this is downvoted. I read Sam Harris' book on free will and it was really good. FabHK's comment is a valuable addition to the discussion.
- jrochkind1 8y ago> Not all humans have the same HK2 viruses in their genomes. Did they take the list of all HK2 viruses, and test them all to see which one had a prevalence in identified addicts? If they did that, would they admit it in the paper? Maybe I've become too cynical, but my default is to assume statistical misuse these days.
- bagacrap 8y agoThey mention some very strong results (P< 0.001) which I don't think can be explained by randomness even if they were to roll the dice several times.
- lazyjones 8y agoIs it possible to just wipe all known virus remains from our DNA and if yes, what would happen? Would the resulting organism even be able to live?
- cc-d 8y agoConsidering viral DNA makes up approximately 8% of the human genome, eliminating it probably wouldn't end too well.
- bazooka2th 8y agoProbably. Improbably, it could produce the ubermensch. Someone needs to get on it.
- charlieflowers 8y agoThe technical debt of the genome. But code that the new folks are afraid to touch.
- jhayward 8y agoThis is akin to asking to delete huge portions of human evolution from the genome. It probably isn't going to work out like you'd want.
- trophycase 8y agoPerhaps the gene that makes people more prone to addiction also makes them take more risk or work harder? You can't just delete shit from an extremely complex system and expect it will just work.
- lists 8y agoDoes this remind anyone of season one of Fortitude on Prime?
- scotty79 8y agoGenetic test that could tell you: "You most likely won't develop physical addiction to cocaine." would be a game changer in some demanding professions. Most people could use cocaine as safely as caffeine but since you have no idea if you get addicted or not mostly dumb people try and some suffer greatly.
- sjg007 8y agoIt would be more useful for treatment programs I think.
- person_of_color 8y agoHuh? Viruses can affect human genes? How come I never learnt this in biology?
- mbroncano 8y agoJust to add one more sci-fi reference, this reminds me of mind rot virus in A Deepness in the Sky [0] by Vernor Vinge [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky
- ridgeguy 8y agoI'll add one more sci-fi reference involving HERVs: Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_Radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_Radio
- diyseguy 8y agoIs it a particular SNP marker/mutation of the RASGRF2 gene? In my genetic report there are 99 such markers, I'm wondering if a specific one is mentioned in the paper.
- SZJX 8y agoI'm still not totally sure how the "causation" part is proven. Just because the genes must have already existed in human beings long before there were drugs? Not sure if this is totally convincing though sure, that is indeed stronger than many other cases as proving causation is really difficult.