Conference Discusses Coverage of Genetics

Copywriters, proof-readers and editors who write headlines can wield as much power as the reporters who actually research and write stories, concluded participants in a Saturday conference at Harvard Medical School.

The fourth annual conference was organized by the school's genetic screening study group and was entitled "Genes That Make News, News That Makes Genes: The Genetics of Complex Traits."

Conference participants discussed how such controversial areas as the genetics of sexuality, cancer and violent behavior or aggressiveness are reported in the media.

Keynote speaker Francis Collins, director of the National Center for Human Genome Research at the National Institutes of Health, criticized headline-based sensationalism in the coverage of scientific issues.

"When I prepare DNA, it doesn't glow orange," he said, referring to a 1984 Newsweek cover featuring a begoggled scientist peering at an incandescent glass flask in a darkened lab with the caption "Preparing DNA."

Collins was also disturbed by last summer's Time Magazine cover question "Infidelity: Is It in Our Genes?" accompanying an article dealing with social anthropology. He called it "a distortion and one that people should be chastised about."

Collins said this media-constructed genetic version of "the Devil made me do it" was irresponsible.

Associate Professor of Neuro-science Xandra O. Breakefield--author of a study that found a defective gene for monoamine oxidase (MAO) in several of the episodically violent, low I.Q., male members of a single Dutch family--called the conclusion that genetics can absolve a person of culpability for personal behavior "totally appalling."

"In terms of aggression, I think it's 99.9 percent determined by environment," Breakefield said. "I don't believe genes determine behavior. They may determine physiology, like mood, which may have some impact on behavior."

Panelist Susan Ince, a freelance science reporter trained in genetic research, cautioned however that "there are many scientists who are eager to advance the social implications of their research."

Some scientists, she said, contributed to the media's over interpretation of their work.

Ince cited interviews she had conducted with scientists for whom a major research motivator was the prospect of medicating people with a putative genetic predisposition to violence.

Chandler Burr, a freelancer writing a book on the biology of homo sexuality, said the Family Research Council, a conservative think tank, uses psychiatrist William Byne's critical review of the data on a possible genetic basis for homosexuality as support for their contention that it is chosen, and hence mutable.