"The Insanity Virus"

BRAIN MAPPING:
Has Science Found a Way To Cure Schizophrenia, Autism and MS?

by Linda Lemaster, Last Chance Rd.

I read with undivided interest, in Discovery Magazine, about 'The Insanity Virus'. Brains and minds and constellations of neurons are a topic of study and interest in my household. Not least because in 1959 my mother hung herself, after somehow wrestling herself free of a recurring nut house nightmare.

This quickie review is not about my mom; I am recommending this news that borught her to my thoughts. Her name was Ann. Story I am reviewing begins on page 58 in the current issue, June 2010.

The Insanity Virus, by Douglas Fox, wears a huge subtitle: "Schizophrenia has long been blamed on bad genes or even bad parents. Wrong, says psychiatrist Fuller Torrey. The real culprit, he claims, is a virus that lives entwined in every person's DNA".

He goes on to describe that little bugger's life cycle, features several families whose lives have been quite literally destroyed by their children's mental problems, and then he polishes off the article with encouragement for us all. He says "a simple neurological test" can reveal those cases wherein this retrovirus has taken hold millions of years before any of us were concieved.

The story begins by comparing twins, one of whom suddenly struggled with autism while the other continued forwardly in his B+ life. These twins have helped science get a more plausible handle on the "genetics versus environment", or t0 jingoise, the "nature versus nurture" discourse. In short, in this article the scientists say, "both!" Like those forces are too entangled and begin way before any one person's birth. and yet they get "triggered", or activated, by mortal stress.

There are 0ther interesting details to recommend this article, and I enjoyed the read. Most importantly, this writer shares a wholly new theory by claiming schizophrenia, autism and multiple sclerosis are all seen as the result of very ancient retroviruses and retro-fungi lodged dormant within us two-legged mammals.

Check out this article, dear Reader, and let me know if this excites you the way it has excited me? Have we finally, maybe, come a long way since the lobotomy's nobel prize-winning Ice Pick? Or are we still stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to the cause of such devastating and often sudden "brain" dysfunctions and all the suffering it causes?

I found it interesting the author attributes more to the nervous system for incubating and reacting to those bugs, than to the brain itself.

I appreciate the consistently clear exposition in The Insanity Virus because science jargon can leap quickly beyond my reach.

I am looking forward to learning more and more on this, and already I am "seeing" (in my own brain, at any rate) another possible world wherein this find may be the long and lucky stride toward a resolution for auto-immune dysfunction as well?