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An extra health-ing - Joanna Lowy

- Content editor, Joanna Lowy, comments on all things health-related, and gives you a sneaky peek into her news-based medical musings of the week. Sometimes controversial, other times humorous, always straight from the heart; here you get to know the girl behind the facts! Enjoy! Comments welcome and invited!
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- Born this way
  
  When you take everything into consideration, allowing, Lady Gaga to excuse her oddities by claiming she was “Born This Way” is, I suppose, perfectly acceptable.
  
  But attempting to alleviate psychopaths of all responsibility because they are, quite simply, ‘born bad, which is what one study has claimed this week, is not only completely gaga, but also very worrying.
  
  Apparently, psychopaths have physically different brains from ‘normal’ people, and are ‘born to kill’.
  
  The study raises the prospect of arguing a defence of insanity, which interestingly, is written as an afterthought, but in all honesty, is the only element of the findings which is not completely absurd. Insanity is a psychological illness, and if one is deemed as such at the time of committing a crime, for right or for wrong, that is between the defendant, the victim and the court. But to almost extrapolate from this so as to insinuate that all psychopaths are born insane, and thus by extension that all psychopathically-induced crime is fate, is just, well, insane.
  
  According to the study, the scans showed that psychopaths have less grey matter in the areas of the brain important for understanding other people’s emotions. That’s as may be, but does that mean they have to act on it? I know people who aren’t great at understanding other people’s emotions, but I’d be hard-pressed to believe they had the ability to kill. After all, one may have a thing for blood, but there’s nothing stopping them from becoming a butcher.
  
  You think that’s bad? That’s nothing compared to what the study then goes on to claim.
  
  Because as a result of psychopaths being ‘born bad’, it must mean that there is, supposedly, ‘simply no point in treating them’. So not only are psychopaths excused from their actions, but there’s also nothing that can be done so as to prevent any further criminal activity in the future.
  
  And it would seem that we haven’t learnt from past mistakes, either, or attempted to treat this reality, as ‘passing the buck’ of responsibility still seems to be the cornerstone of all crime. A murderer blaming his victim because, after all, he did sleep with his wife; a thief stealing from a rich old lady because she failed to implement the correct security measures. Adolf Hitler killing six million Jews because of course Germany’s downfall was their fault. And now, with a Neo Nazi party on the rise in Greece, things are just the same as they always have been.
  
  “Those who have betrayed the homeland must now be afraid”, roared the leader of the Golden Dawn party this week, with the principal aim of ridding Greece of all illegal immigrants. “Greece is only the beginning … you know exactly what I mean.”
  
  As always, responsibility is placed on innocent victims as the real psychopaths get away with murder
  
  It seems the only brain matter missing is in us for allowing this culture to exist.
  
  But then, it’s not our fault.
  - 10 May 2012
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Born this way

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