One of the many tributes to the late John F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the 35th President of the US, who was killed in a plane crash last month reads as follows: “He got his father’s looks, grace, social ease, droll humour and a casual attitude toward risk.”
Such eulogy appears to denote that John John inherited much else from his father beyond astonishing looks and other physical traits. He also took after many of his old man’s behavioural disposition.
Taking risk is a Kennedy family tradition. The oldest son Joe Jr. died on a virtual suicide mission during World War II. Many other siblings were known to have grabbed life by the lapels. Some survived, others perished.
A question often asked by many who faithfully follow the triumph and tragedy of the Kennedy family is, “Are members of the American first family born with a gene that drives risk-taking behaviour or are they simply cursed?”
Scientists have actually been probing for the answer to a similar question since the dawn of modern civilisation. This has led to the promulgation of a new area of science known as behavioural genetics.
The gene is both a biological and chemical structure. It is the unit of heredity, a sequence of deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA that, through minute and specific protein entities, carries information that helps to form living cells and tissues.
Thus far, behavioural genetics have successfully delineated components of complex traits in plants and animals.
When applied to human, this exciting field of science has an enormous potential to uncover both genetic and environmental influences on normal and deviant behaviour.
Until a few decades ago, psychologists believed that human characteristics were almost entirely the result of environmental influences. But such presumption began to change in the 1990s.
‘Gene talk’ entered the vernacular as a subject for movies and soap operas, a source of humour and an explanation of human behaviour very much earlier. Genes appear to explain a lot of things, from obesity to criminality.
There are selfish genes, pleasure-seeking genes or ‘addiction’ genes, celebrity genes, gay genes, couch-potato genes, violence genes, depression genes, genes for genius, genes for saving, and even genes for sinning, better known as the ‘religiosity’ genes.
In 1907 botanist Luther Burbank wrote that �stored within heredity are all joys, sorrows, loves, hates, music, art, temples, palaces, pyramids, hovels, kings, queens, paupers, bards, prophets and philosophers…. and all the mysteries of the universe.
Then in 1920 eugenecists Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson announced that immortality was a real possibility, for the human reproductive cells carrying the ‘very soul’ of the individual, lived on in children and grandchildren.
Later in 1934 Harry H. Cook opined in his popular eugenics primer Like Begets Like that “within the nucleus of the germ cell lie the most important things in the whole world, the chromosomes, which are the determiners of character and in reality responsible for our natural individuality.”
The study of genetics have come a long way since then. Through scientific investigations, today many of the human characteristics are known to be genetically-determined.
For example, behavioural genetics have revealed that intelligence and memory too possess some degree of genetic influence. Sometimes the effect can be quite substantial.
These findings have coaxed developmental psychologists to revise two major tenets of their theories. Traditionally, the assertion is that genetic influences were important in infancy and early childhood.
As the child matured, environmental influences, including parents and peers, appeared to take precedence. However, there are now evidence especially from twin studies with pairs who live apart that, for many behavioural traits, genetic effects increase throughout early childhood and adolescence, rather than diminish.
Studies from moderate to large size population of twins involving between 300 to 12,000 pairs, have obtained data on measures of behavioural similarity, such as how they look.
For example one study involves identical twins separated at birth and living apart, one raised as a Catholic in Germany, and the other reared by his Jewish father in Trinidad.
When brought together again years later, both were found to be sporting blue double-breasted epauletted shirts, moustaches and wire-rimmed glasses.
Traditional dogma also suggested that salient environmental influence on behavioural development were shared by family members, rather than experienced uniquely by individuals.
However, recent findings actually discovered otherwise. For many behavioural traits, environmental influences make family members different rather than making them more similar to one another.
A simple example is our own children. Although all are brought up under the care of the same family, they tend to differ both in personality and academic performance.
The importance of genes in the formation of behavioural and non-behavioural traits such as inherited diseases was subtlely revealed through some of the verses of the Holy Quran.
Verse 23 of Surah An-Nisa’ states that “Prohibited to you for marriage are your mothers, daughters, sisters, father’s sisters, mother’s sisters, brother’s daughters, sister’s daughters, foster mothers who breastfeed you, foster sisters, your wives’ mothers, your step-daughters under your guardianship. “
The Prophet too, did not encourage marriage among close relatives for fear of procreating offsprings with what is now known as genetic diseases, such as thallassaemia, Huntington’s disease and even schizophrenia.
Such prohibition is akin to the current notion of genetic counselling. Parents are now enquiring the possibilities of manipulating the genotypes of their offspring to ensure a desired outcome for the pregnancy.
Thus, if the gene were indeed a significant determinant of a human characteristic such as intelligence, should it follow that it too would decide on the mental capability based on the various racial mix of the human species?
This is where research in behavioural genetics appears to have been most revealing. Genetic influences only contribute to individual differences. These variations certainly cannot be extrapolated to account for differences based on race or creed, or anything else for that matter.
The issue of racial bias was aptly addressed by the Holy Prophet. In his sermon on Mount Arafat during the last pilgrimage before his death he said,
“Listen to my words, O men. The Arab is not superior to non-Arab, and neither is the non-Arab superior to Arab. You are all sons of Adam, who was made up of dust.”
Lately debates have linked mediocrity to the genetic make-up of a certain race. At the same time a member of the same race achieved the rare distinction of sailing solo around the globe.
No big deal to some perhaps, but enough to neutralise the pathetic, mandom-gene theory normally associated with the Malays. At the end of the day, it is not a question of the gene, really. Rather, it is the will!