Citation

Blum K, Oscar-Berman M, Bowirrat A, Giordano J, Madigan M, Braverman ER, Barh D, Hauser M, Borsten J, Simpatico T. J. Genet. Syndr. Gene Ther. 2012; 3(112): ePub.

Affiliation

Department of Psychiatry and McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida, College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA ; Department of Holistic Medicine, G & G Holistic Addiction Treatment Center, North Miami Beach, FL, USA ; Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation, New York, NY, USA ; Centre for Genomics and Applied Gene Technology, Institute of Integrative Omics and Applied Biotechnology (IIOAB), Nonakuri, PurbaMedinipur, West Bengal, India ; Department of Addiction Research and Therapy, Malibu Beach Recovery Center, Malibu Beach, CA, USA ; Department of Psychiatry, University of Vermont School of Medicine, Burlington, VT, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, The author(s), Publisher OMICS Publishing Group)

DOI

10.4172/2157-7412.1000112

PMID

23336089

Abstract

Mindful of the new evolutionary ideas related to an emerging scientific focus known as omics, we propose that spiritual, social, and political behaviors may be tied in part to inheritable reward gene polymorphisms, as has been demonstrated for the addictions. If so, analyses of gene polymorphisms may assist in predicting liberalism or conservatism in partisan attachments. For example, both drinking (alcohol) and obesity seem to cluster in large social networks and are influenced by friends having the same genotype, in particular the DRD2 A1 allele. Likewise, voting, voting turnout and attachment to a particular political ideology is differentially related to various reward genes (e.g., 5HTT, MOA, DRD2, and DRD4), possibly predicting liberalism or conservatism. Moreover, voters' genetic information may predict presidential outcomes more than the actual issues at hand or the presidential candidates themselves. Thus, political discussions on TV, radio, or other media may be morphed by one's reward gene polymorphisms and as such, may explain the prevalence of generations of die-hard republicans and equally entrenched democratic legacies. Indeed, even in politics, birds of a feather (homophily) flock together. We caution that our proposal should be viewed mindfully awaiting additional research before definitive statements or conclusions can be derived from the studies to date, and we encourage large scale studies to confirm these earlier reports.

Language: en