We cannot do studies on human mental disorders by doing lab tests. Firstly, this would be psychotically immoral if we knew enough to be able to pull it off, and secondly, we don't. (Mengele didn't actually find out a damn useful thing in all of his evil human experiments... we don't know enough about the human brain to do something like experimentally simulate the conditions that cause anorexia.)

We do, however, know that if identical twins and fraternal twins show a significant difference in their statistical likelihood of doing something, THERE IS A GENETIC CONCORDANCE. Because they are born at the same time to the same parents and gestated in the same womb, so what the hell else is different about them besides their genes? Yes, they're different people and parents respond to different people differently, but the same is true of identical twins. The fact that some identicals raised apart have weird coincidences like marrying women with the same name does *not* invalidate twin research -- studying pools of people such as separated identicals, comparing identicals and fraternals, and comparing adopted children vs. natural children are the only way we have to study the different impact of genes vs. environment on the human brain. This kind of statistical research is the gold standard for all research on the causes of mental disease, because human brains are too different from even primate brains to cause mental disease in animal models the way we do physical diseases (and in fact, this type of research is heavily used in physical disease research as well.) Complaining that there are no real-world lab tests being done just indicates that the poster has no idea what the ethical or practical issues in studying human mental diseases could possibly be.

It is true that evidence suggests that exposure to modern Western culture is a necessary component for developing anorexia. It is also true that 99% of the people exposed to modern Western culture do not develop the disorder. (A larger number probably develop other eating disorders, but it's still far from a majority.) Saying that there is a genetic predisposition, which then requires triggering conditions from the environment, perfectly fits the available data, which seems to suggest that a very, very small number of people in Western culture are vulnerable to the disease, and no one from more traditional cultures with healthier body image values. If the disease requires both a genetic predisposition and environmental factors, then it is easy to understand why that is so.

It is valid to be suspicious of a scientist doing a study on anorexia who has ties to the weight-loss industry. But in this case I see nothing to complain about in either the methodology or the conclusions. The suggestion is that if there is a genetic basis for the disease which then must be triggered environmentally, we may be able to come up with ways to combat the disease through drug therapy (I would rather save girls' lives and not change the culture so much than break my head battering it against the brick wall of our culture and incidentally see those young women die -- anorexia's too dangerous to have a politically correct methodology for defeating it. We need to do what works.) We may also be able to identify people who are at risk ahead of time and target them for interventions. (In particular, eating disorders do seem to run in families, whether due to nature or nurture, and I imagine that a woman who is borderline herself, who obsesses over food and is constantly criticizing her daughter's weight because of her *own* genetic propensity for anorexia, is far more likely to drive that child, who's inherited the propensity, into having the disease than a mother who does not herself have food issues, and by targeting families that are at risk with education and therapy we may be able to break certain cycles. Some anorexics have no anorexic relatives and no family history of food issues, but I've heard from too many people with eating disorders about the behavior of adults in their family triggering their own problems when they were children.) This hardly lets Western culture off the hook in terms of what causes the disease -- 44% environmental factors is not chopped liver. But it does offer hope that there may be better, more directed therapies we can try that are less pie-in-the-sky than "promote healthy body images for everyone!"

let's see

"The new study was done by researchers at University of North Carolina and Sweden's Karolinkska Institute, and according the Associated Press, it "looked at a Swedish registry of 31,406 twins -- both identical and fraternal...Anorexia was more prevalent between identicals, and statistical analysis led to the scientists' conclusion that 56 percent of the liability for developing anorexia is due to genetics, with environmental factors determining the rest."

Not buying. The data is not strong enough to back any conclusion as such, and frankly this does not in any way account for something that can be explaining WHY this is happening, like the fact that identical (separated) twins have been shown in countless occasions to take similar life paths. Are they gonna tell me that two twin brother that married women with the same name did that because they had a gene that ordered them to??

We do not yet know if our genetic makeup affects one's behaviour.

Second: if no lab tests have been made, how can they be so sure about even what percentage of the people's behaviour this would affect??

Let me get this straight:

1. No lab tests have been made.

2. There is no actual scientifically obtained evidence for this but a bunch of numbers.

3. There is no actual proof that genetic makeup affects one's behaviour.

let's see what one of the guys involved in this say

Michael Strober, a clinical psychologist at the University of California at

Los Angeles and editor of the International Journal of Eating Disorders, said

conventional wisdom is that genetic factors do play a role in

susceptibility.

Conventional wisdom?? Excuse me?? As in "we don't really know that this is true but we're winging it with shiny words"??

So...we have a conclusion based on nothing that can be proven, just some numbers.

On any planet, this would be a point of starting.

HOWEVER, this is being presented as a completed study, with its conclusion...

hm

I have noted that there has been a tendence lately to explain away anorexia as all sorts of things, from comparing it to alcoholism and other addictive afflictions to this.

One wonders why

No I fucking don't. From the moment I started reading this shit, I knew the why.

These are attempts to prove that anorexia is not a recent disease. Despite the fact that there is no evidence of anorexia ever having existed before the 20th century.

There is a common theory amongst mental health specialists and sociologues that anorexia is a result of the mass media campaign of the latest decades to impose upon the public consciousness a skeletal archetypal beauty.

Now, everyone knows that the-promoting-skeletons-as-beauty-archetypes industry makes a lot of money. As such, it has to defend its own existence in order to make more profits. Therefore, rumours that anorexia might be a result of their bottomline are bad and need to be fought.

Now wo is this Dr Cynthia Bulik who apparently ran this study??

A google search shows this

Healthy weight control 6-week workshop only at the triangle sportsplex by dr. cynthia bulik

Do you always seem to be on a diet?

Are you not pleased with your weight, shape or body in general?

If you answered yes, you're not alone!

The Empower Plan for Healthy Weight Control

workshop series is for you!

The 6-week series begins on Wednesday, March 15th from 5:30pm-6:30pm and will meet every Wednesday for 6 weeks.

During the 6-weeks, Dr. Bulik and Victoria Petrilli, RD, LDN will thoroughly go over Dr. Bulik's groundbreaking patient-tested book and interactive CD-ROM that will teach you:

How to eat on time and in time

How to identify your triggers for unhealthy eating

Permanent healthy nutrition (say goodbye to fad diets)

Myths about mid-life weight gain and how to overcome mid-life weight gain

Practical strategies for maintaining a healthy lifestyle

www.trianglesportsplex.com/

Ahem.... Dr Bulik is involved herself in the weightloss industry???

did you hear that? there is her credibility breaking into pieces.

MORE

http://www.allbookstores.com/author/Cynthia_Bulik.html

She has a book called Runaway eating.

Runaway Eating : The 8-point Plan To Conquer Adult Food And Weight Obsessions by Nadine Taylor, CYNTHIA BULIK

Let me get this straight

This woman is a psychiatrist who has her hands deep in the weight loss industry. However, the study that she presides is marketed as a genetic study, but no name of genetics specialist are given. She is knee deep in the weightloss industry herself, and she is leading a study whose hidden aim is to prove that there is no link between the skeletal beauty industry and anorexia...

Someone has put the wolf in charge of finding out why sheep die.