Ebbie - I'll PM if you like with a list of papers and books that explore the various genetic aspects of potential predispostion to violence. It would bore the pants of everyone here. And, it's not just the metabolic issues that are being explored.

I co-authored an article that summarised some of the research and while I oversimplified it quite a bit in my statement - the low resting heart-rate...when found in conjunction with certain other physiological factors does seem to be a valid predictor for which males may 'act out' in their teens and/or develop a history of violence. The danger of course in in people over-applying the information innapropriately. It's not something that can be boiled down to a soundbyte.

The cutting edge research in this area is actually not being done in the United States where I live, but in England. One of the doctors involved actually has sxome of the traits he's studying! He makes it clear that there is a difference between sociopathology and this physiological predispostion to violence that's being explored. They differentiate between people who acquire lower resting heart-rates via physical conditiong and people who are born with abnormally low heart rates.

One of the theories is that these kids are less easily aroused emiotionally and therefore less likely to develop normal empathy. they also display a sort of 'slow burn' type of anger that isn't as readily apparent to observers because of their low arousal. Therefore, when they actually have a burst of rage, it appears to be out of proprotion to nromalm rage when in fact, it merely took them a lot longer to get that angry. Therefore, the problem may be more in how we react to these kids than in the kids themselves.

As with anything having to do with raising children, the evidence seems to show that parents can have a postive effect on kids who have a]some of these characteristics but simply encouraging greater engagement with peers, family and their enivirnoment. So while, yes, there are certain genetic characteristics that might predsipose one to certain behvaiors society finds troublesome, there also appears to be plenty of means to mitiagte that predispostion.

I hope that explains things more completely. Let me know if you want to do some reading.

I only brought this up because my statements were headed towards the 'we get the society we deserve' end of the argument and I was merely attempting to qaulify my own words with the 'there will always be physicological factors we can't control' type of argument.