Behavioral Genetics: Will There Be a Genetic Cure for Autism and Dyslexia?

In the newly emerging field of behavioral genetics, the old debate of nurture vs. nature comes back in full force. Controversy surrounds behavioral genetics, generally because people are uninformed. Through presentation of the facts, this paper will inform readers of the benefits studying behavioral genetics has for thousands of people with behavioral disorders. In this paper, children with autism and dyslexia will be focused on specifically. New discoveries into the way the brain works are also presented to show that scientists are not trying to destroy human potential and opportunity, but to learn how nurture and nature interact with each other.

Behavioral genetics is a scientific field, which "seeks to understand both the genetic and environmental contributions to individual variations in human behavior" (McInerney par. 1). Joseph McInerney whose description of behavioral genetics is featured on the Human Genome Project website states in a bulleted list, four reasons why this is an extremely challenging field:

· It is often difficult to define the behavior in question.

· Having established a definition for research purposes, the investigator still must measure the behavior with acceptable degrees of validity and reliability.

· Behaviors, like all complex traits, involve multiple genes, a reality that complicates the search for genetic contributions.

· As with much other research in genetics, studies of genes and behavior require analysis of families and populations for comparison of those who have the trait in question with those who do not. The result often is a statement of 'heritability,' a statistical construct that estimates the amount of variation in a population that is attributable to genetic factors. The explanatory power of heritability figures is limited, however, applying only to the population studied and only to the environment in place at the time the study was conducted[...]Most important, heritability statements provide no basis for predictions about the expression of the trait in question in any given individual (McInerney par. 2)