Is It Time to Treat Violence Like a Contagious Disease?

These folks think so. Humans have always been violent, but could it be treated like a Disease? Should it be treated as such?

What they describe might seem at first like common sense. Intuitively we understand that people surrounded by violence are more likely to be violent themselves. This isn’t just some nebulous phenomenon, argue Slutkin and his colleagues, but a dynamic that can be rigorously quantified and understood.

According to their theory, exposure to violence is conceptually similar to exposure to, say, cholera or tuberculosis. Acts of violence are the germs. Instead of wracking intestines or lungs, they lodge in the brain. When people, in particular children and young adults whose brains are extremely plastic, repeatedly experience or witness violence, their neurological function is altered.

I was actually surprised there is research on it.

Some of the best-known research on this phenomenon comes from analyses of homicides in New York City. Homicide rates nearly tripled between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s, rose in waves through the mid-1990s, and then fell precipitously, like a disease burning itself out.

Is It Time to Treat Violence Like a Contagious Disease?


Very interesting indeed.


So if it can be considered a Disease, is it curable?

ATS, Thoughts?

At first I was like "wtf do they even mean by that?"

Then I realized it. "According to their theory, exposure to violence is conceptually similar to exposure to, say, cholera or tuberculosis."

They really just want to get violence of the TVs. A bunch of damn leftists.

It's still a stupid idea. I just understand their goal now.

reply to post by sonnny1


Yes, it is curable. The government has a vaccine on standby for everyone, saying no is not an option. If a vaccine isn't suffice, they have a machine with the radiation of 1000 nuclear bombs that will heal you, but it's totally safe because they said so.

reply to post by Ghost375


That's what I thought also. I am sure that this could go hand in hand with pre-crime too. I will say this. Humans are violent. Its ALWAYS been that way.

The decline in violent crime is thought to be linked to lower lead levels in the environment due to gasoline becoming unleaded , paint banned etc.

Meanwhile, Nevin had kept busy as well, and in 2007 he published a new paper looking at crime trends around the world (PDF). This way, he could make sure the close match he'd found between the lead curve and the crime curve wasn't just a coincidence. Sure, maybe the real culprit in the United States was something else happening at the exact same time, but what are the odds of that same something happening at several different times in several different countries? Nevin collected lead data and crime data for Australia and found a close match. Ditto for Canada. And Great Britain and Finland and France and Italy and New Zealand and West Germany. Every time, the two curves fit each other astonishingly well. When I spoke to Nevin about this, I asked him if he had ever found a country that didn't fit the theory. "No," he replied. "Not one." Just this year, Tulane University researcher Howard Mielke published a paper with demographer Sammy Zahran on the correlation of lead and crime at the city level. They studied six US cities that had both good crime data and good lead data going back to the '50s, and they found a good fit in every single one. In fact, Mielke has even studied lead concentrations at the neighborhood level in New Orleans and shared his maps with the local police. "When they overlay them with crime maps," he told me, "they realize they match up."

Put all this together and you have an astonishing body of evidence. We now have studies at the international level, the national level, the state level, the city level, and even the individual level. Groups of children have been followed from the womb to adulthood, and higher childhood blood lead levels are consistently associated with higher adult arrest rates for violent crimes. All of these studies tell the same story: Gasoline lead is responsible for a good share of the rise and fall of violent crime over the past half century.

The gasoline lead story has another virtue too: It's the only hypothesis that persuasively explains both the rise of crime in the '60s and '70s and its fall beginning in the '90s. Two other theories—the baby boom demographic bulge and the drug explosion of the '60s—at least have the potential to explain both, but neither one fully fits the known data. Only gasoline lead, with its dramatic rise and fall following World War II, can explain the equally dramatic rise and fall in violent crime.

Because lead eats your brain...

One set of scans found that lead exposure is linked to production of the brain's white matter—primarily a substance called myelin, which forms an insulating sheath around the connections between neurons. Lead exposure degrades both the formation and structure of myelin, and when this happens, says Kim Dietrich, one of the leaders of the imaging studies, "neurons are not communicating effectively." Put simply, the network connections within the brain become both slower and less coordinated.

A second study found that high exposure to lead during childhood was linked to a permanent loss of gray matter in the prefrontal cortex—a part of the brain associated with aggression control as well as what psychologists call "executive functions": emotional regulation, impulse control, attention, verbal reasoning, and mental flexibility. One way to understand this, says Kim Cecil, another member of the Cincinnati team, is that lead affects precisely the areas of the brain "that make us most human."

So lead is a double whammy: It impairs specific parts of the brain responsible for executive functions and it impairs the communication channels between these parts of the brain. For children like the ones in the Cincinnati study, who were mostly inner-city kids with plenty of strikes against them already, lead exposure was, in Cecil's words, an "additional kick in the gut." And one more thing: Although both sexes are affected by lead, the neurological impact turns out to be greater among boys than girls.

www.motherjones.com...

It's an interesting theory

People can be trained, but never tamed.

We are still animals and anyone that forgets that. Is delusional.

reply to post by sonnny1

i see they avoided mentioning all this 'violence' was GANG related

So if it can be considered a Disease, is it curable?

yes, eliminate the gangs.

This documentary claims violence is a disease and the only way to stop iti, is to interrupt it. It catches by one group always having to take revenge for attacks on their gang. So if you don't interrupt it, It will just continue. The interrupters is a great idea, but I believe the problems run much deeper.

Now that's really pushing the maximum limits of belief to covering EVERY human behavior not like their own with some diagnosis that can carry a treatment and usually in terms of proper dosage.

- I'd said before and strongly believe that the sheer non-stop flood of brutality on television from morning through afternoon/after-school on past prime time and into late night has an effect.

- I think the video games that quite literally teach small unit combat tactics as a necessary skill to become VERY good at them as opposed to just kinda average targets have an impact.

- Above All....The non-stop and near endless back-to-back crisis put to the public in filling 24hr news cycles that start fresh 365 times a year has an impact. If it bleeds, it leads and the more brutal the better. All the while, T-shirt makers pimp hate with slogans like "snitches get stitches" sold in stores.

The mixed messaging kids apparently just come to accept as background noise is staggering.

Having said that? ALL THESE PROBLEMS come down to ONE thing and none of the above are that ONE thing. Outside of TRUE psychiatric illness as the exception, this is SELF-DISCIPLINE as well as anything to use as a base of morality or values to see why doing things the right way matters. Once the first lines are crossed for that reason? Well, now those influences do matter for how BAD the outcome is.

Even someone like Armstrong who was an Honest to God inspiration and used as an example and role model to kids with a lot of challenges to look up to .......turned out to be a 'Made in America' example of the betterment of man through modern chemistry. Nothing as decent as pure hard work and determination ....but then, those are values, and values are the punch line to jokes all too often, eh?

It's only amazing society isn't worse yet ....but nothing that can be banned, taxed or outlawed can fix it. Finding a way to FIND morality again....and empathy..and compassion.. that's all that slows the violence, IMO. That's the hard part.

Originally posted by Honor93
reply to post by sonnny1

 

i see they avoided mentioning all this 'violence' was GANG related

So if it can be considered a Disease, is it curable?

yes, eliminate the gangs.

Couldn't the US government be considered a gang?? or any government for that matter?

violence a disease?
hmmm
what we need is a vaccine...

Thorazine maybe?
:

There's only one sure fire way to eliminate violence.

Send in the Snack man

reply to post by sonnny1


Hmm, I do not really think that this strategy would apply to the real world. Let´s say we do treat violence like a disease. Then what? Could we make a vaccine? Surely not.

I do not see the point in trying to rethink something that is already explained in much detail.

We know the most reasons why people get violent. It is not that people are bad or violent by nature, it is almost always situations of need and poverty that create violence.

We do have less violence in developed countries for example. The happier we humans are, the less need for violence we see. So we should focus on getting rid of hunger and real diseases and the rest will follow automatically.

In short, violence almost always is a symptom of a larger problem.

It's hard to hear about things like this. . . .

Three girls were charged with gang assault Tuesday morning after they allegedly attacked a mom as she put her young child on a school bus.

The girls — two 13-year-olds and a 12-year-old — called what they did "mobbing" or "popping" on someone, and told police they did it for fun and chose their victim at random.

The attack happened at 7:50 a.m. on Route 9W near the Ledyard Street intersection.

Source

. . . On a near daily basis anymore and not think the sheer casual and pointless brutality isn't a fairly new thing.

This absolutely did not happen when I was growing up because I was among those groups who would have been doing it ...if that had been something even remotely tolerable back then ...but heck, who would have even thought of this? For fun? Beating down a Mother in front of her small child? I mean jeeeeeeze.... It's hard to even imagine the sheer lack of human empathy or compassion that requires on the part of those girls.

Right / Wrong just doesn't carry much for meaning ...after all.. Everything is to blame on something else, like a disease.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but we are separating ourselves from beasts.

Witnessing violence won't necessarily makes you more violent... You *could* actually develop a strong aversion to violence.... but being a part of it, such as growing up with it in your family makes you more numb to it and more numb to the suffering of others.

Now to REALLY piss people off.

Nothing will make you as violent as *eating it*

Even non-violent people have a tendency toward social destructiveness, undermining people, rumors, hateful superficiality, racism, sexism... You actually eat more of this than you witness on average.

Having a burger? you are eating the herding animals (pack mentality, species exclusion) You eat their hormones PLUS the added ones (sexual misconduct) You eat the carnal animal whose living/thinking standards are thought to be less than your own. You think heating the meat rids the meat of any possible disease but you are eating their very amino acids... their very proteins... PRIONS and DNA codes, which are the basic building blocks of an animal and you incorporate all of that into your system to build YOUR body. Not to mention this.... check out this quote taken off the humane society website....

"Is there any evidence of a connection between animal cruelty and human violence?
Absolutely. Many studies in psychology, sociology, and criminology during the last 25 years have demonstrated that violent offenders frequently have childhood and adolescent histories of serious and repeated animal cruelty. The FBI has recognized the connection since the 1970s, when its analysis of the lives of serial killers suggested that most had killed or tortured animals as children. Other research has shown consistent patterns of animal cruelty among perpetrators of more common forms of violence, including child abuse, spouse abuse, and elder abuse. In fact, the American Psychiatric Association considers animal cruelty one of the diagnostic criteria of conduct disorder."

You are what you eat and you know this.

You know very well that we take in the patterns of life and grow forth from this.

You may try to say that these patterns will not change but that's probably what the dinosaurs thought... and boy did they change!

As a matter of fact, they changed into us... and other animals today we can see with our own eyes are developing more human like behaviors... and it works vice versa as well because we have been living in the ANIMAL world since our inception but we tend to think WE own it despite having rode in on THEIR backs.

Just because it takes a long time for these changes to take place and you may not notice it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. You KNOW it does.

And now as animals become more and more human and species die off and become less aggressive, people will become more like machines.

We already can't live our "accepted" standard of living without machines.

DON'T EVEN TRY TO KID YOURSELF... You know this is true.

So you think humans will always be violent... that depends on whether or not we keep building violent machines... because our nature will steer toward the machines we are building.

Or maybe we will merge with a spiritual nature that we have been trying to achieve. We can only achieve that by getting away from herd mentality.

The key is building a balanced symbiotic relationship with our energy source. we WILL parasite off of something. If it is not a pleasant and helpful 2 way relationship, then yes... it will back fire and the fighting will continue.

The violence in our blood today is just the animals unspoken revenge.

It hasn't the brains or voice to verbalize it, but it has the savage heart and that heart pollutes our species because we refuse to acknowledge how we parasited off of them, LIVED because of them... and most of us refuse to admit it and stop.

And since I'll probably be told by 50 people how wrong I am... you might as well skip it and just have fun with your bad cholesterol and prostate issues.

Theoretically, banning the portrayal of violence in media and such could and probably would lead to a reduction in overall violence rates in the world given enough time - read: generations. From a sociological standpoint, aggression breeds aggression is one of the most basic tenets you learn.

The real question is, "is my right to entertainment and fully informed news any less important than society's right to reduced rates of violence in future, by an indeterminate amount?"

Originally posted by Dispo
Theoretically, banning the portrayal of violence in media and such could and probably would lead to a reduction in overall violence rates in the world given enough time - read: generations. From a sociological standpoint, aggression breeds aggression is one of the most basic tenets you learn.

The real question is, "is my right to entertainment and fully informed news any less important than society's right to reduced rates of violence in future, by an indeterminate amount?"

Now that you mention that... MSM outlets use this excuse for not showing us the truth, but violent video games and movies make light of violence.

the difference is in the gravity... That is why I say witnessing violence might actually cause you to develop an aversion to violence, where as making light of it does just that in real life terms.

The real question is... Do we uphold it... or condemn it.

Our society upholds violence as entertainment and sport (and food) but we suppress the truly condemnable material of the violent TRUTH.

Keep showing real war footage, slaughter houses, animals cruelty and human rights violations (which we NEED to witness) and it will not raise our tendencies to think light of violence as the entertainment industry causes us to do.

We celebrate violence. We do not condemn it.. THAT is the problem.

(plus, we eat it)

When they say exposure to violence, what do they actually mean? Are they talking about physical violence, an action movie, violent video games or sport? I mean, people are exposed to violence in so many different ways, its hard to just pin it on witnessing or being involved in violence in real life.

I think that we have always been violent and will always be. However, I do think that there are those who could go either way, give into their impulses or resist. If society condones or encourages violence, then those on the borderline will more likely act out, not fearing consequences. We celebrate anti-heroes in this country in movies, games, graphic novels, etc. These heroes are often violent. For the unstable it is a confusing message.

Just like programs that promote wellness by creating health in the body, I do think we can create a society that is less violent, than we have in the USA. Many counties in Europe for example have very little violence, compared to us.

Not sure about the disease model. imho our whole society is sick, not just the violent aspects.

reply to post by sonnny1


I think so. It is too easy an answer though. People are looking for something harder, something magical. It is too bad people don't see that violence spreads like a disease and can be contained like any other contagion.