
Evidence that addictive behaviors have links with ancient retroviral infection - daegloe
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180924174503.htm
======
rfinney
Link to PNAS research paper:
[http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/09/19/1811940115](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/09/19/1811940115)

Human Endogenous Retrovirus-K HML-2 integration within RASGRF2 is associated
with intravenous drug abuse and modulates transcription in a cell-line model

 _Not all humans have the same HK2 viruses in their genomes. Here we show that
one specific uncommon HK2, which lies close to a gene involved in dopaminergic
activity in the brain, is more frequently found in drug addicts and thus is
significantly associated with addiction. We experimentally show that HK2 can
manipulate nearby genes. Our study provides strong evidence that uncommon HK2
can be responsible for unappreciated pathogenic burden, and thus underlines
the health importance of exploring the phenotypic roles of young,
insertionally polymorphic HK2 integrations in human populations._

...

 _Based on our cell-line experiments, we suggest that RASGRF2-int leads to
enhancement of dopaminergic activity through higher expression of the first
exons of RASGRF2, which then results in increased potential for addiction._

~~~
WhompingWindows
Very sensible that the mutation relates to the dopaminergic activity, just
based on our knowledge of the reward pathway and the effect of addictive drugs
on dopamine. There may even been a positive feedback loop here, as any viral
gene inserted that increases risky, impulsive behavior may also encourage
procreation.

~~~
the_jeremy
While that might be true today, I don't agree that increasing risk-taking
behaviors was evolutionarily advantageous past some equilibrium (otherwise,
we'd have a new equilibrium).

~~~
1_over_n
Depends whether you consider this to be evolutionary advantageous to us or the
virus/bacteria...similar example from toxoplasmosis
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis)

Geoffrey West touches upon some of this stuff in scale - its worth a read

[https://www.amazon.com/Scale-Universal-Innovation-
Sustainabi...](https://www.amazon.com/Scale-Universal-Innovation-
Sustainability-Organisms/dp/1594205582)

Oversimplification is that some of the viruses / genetic defects that kill us
later let us live long enough to reproduce first and pass those
traits/infections along.

~~~
876ret
The ancient Egyptians liked cats, and considering the effect T. Gondi has on
males[1] (higher Testosotorone & dominance) and females[2] (submissiveness),
this could have been a reason why they worshipped cats. It could also be
considered an early example of a biological weapon used on sections of
population.

With regard to addictive behaviour, some research has suggested addictions are
neuro amine addictions, ie andrenaline, dopamine & serotonin. Cocaine for
example last in the body for upto 2hrs and amplifies dopamine and serotonin,
so being addicted to feeling good is understandable, however serotonin also
plays a part in the innate immune system and the association between
depression and illness has also long been known. The medical profession SSRI's
inhibit the uptake of serotonin in the brain, which reduces the brains ability
to convert it into melatonin (4x more potent than Vit C), plus not much can
cross the blood brain barrier so the adapative immune can not work in the
brain, eyes, gonads, ovaries. So whilst SSRI's can make you feel good, like
everything in life it can also have its side effects because we are a bundle
of realtime complex pathways oscillating in time and space.

One other point of risk taking behaviour, some of you may have noticed when
you feel like you are going down with something like a cold or flu, you may
also feel the need to procreate before the illness takes hold. This would
suggest an evolutionary response to pass on genes, but excessive amounts of
chemicals which can harm the body can also cause this behaviour as well,
illegal drugs & alcohol being examples. ie did you know that smokers have
elevated levels of copper in their blood stream? This is probably due to the
need to deal with the risk of foreign bodies coming into the blood stream
through the lungs, but copper and iron is also required to prevent anemia,
which in turn is required to make red blood cells, plus its also known that
elite atheletes, people living at high altitude and smokers have enlarged red
blood cells. Plus smoking can also be a form of self medication if an asthma
inhaler is not available, asthma being a type of allergic reaction to debris
or pathogens inhaled, most commonly being from pets or pollution. [1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17435678](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17435678)
[2]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17435678](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17435678)

------
mcfunk
It's almost as if evidence continues to mount that addiction is a health issue
and should be treated as such, rather than as a matter of criminality.

For anyone interested in further reading on the topic I highly recommend
information available from the Institute For Addiction Study
([https://www.theinstituteforaddictionstudy.org/](https://www.theinstituteforaddictionstudy.org/)).

~~~
mc32
Certain aspects? Sure. All aspects? No. I don’t mind the buying the use and
the minor incidentsl things. But if the addiction causes harm, be it physical,
material or other major impacts on others, then it becomes both a health issue
and a criminsl issue (stealing, hit and runs, deception, and obviously more).
But yes, let’s try and treat it first rather than seek punishment first.

~~~
crawfordcomeaux
Punishment runs counter to all forms of sustainable learning, according to the
science of learning how to learn.

Let's lovingly apply science to criminalization of people being human, rather
than criminalizing human behavior. Let's not seek to punish. Let's start
exploring other solutions spaces.

~~~
mc32
Let’s say you havd someone in the Army of some country, any country, and that
soldier does heinous things contrary than that allowed by internstional
convention on clearly a civilian population, let’s say, do we still say, “oh,
hey, they were high, it’s an illness, let’s treat them and after done, let’s
get them back in the army”.

~~~
nanofortnight
Yes, obviously, if that can be proven to be the cause? Proper criminal
rehabilitation and reintegration is very important.

~~~
hutzlibu
It is. But there are psychopaths out there who simply don't do violence out of
fear from counterviolence. Remove the threat with social works and they laugh
about it.

So in general I agree, that there are better methods than punishment, but for
some it works.

~~~
Bjartr
We should take incidence rate of such characteristics into account before
proscribing general approaches

~~~
hutzlibu
I believe it will be hard to get those numbers. I take history as evidence
that there are plenty of people or groups out there, who do violence to gain
benefit. It was rather the norm. The strong eat the weak.

Humanism is a relativly new concept. One worth pursuing, but maybe not blinded
by idealism.

~~~
Bjartr
> I believe it will be hard to get those numbers.

I believe it is worth the effort

> It was rather the norm. The strong eat the weak.

There are a variety of reasons for this. Different reasons have different most
effective solutions. If we choose as our general solution something that has
narrow scope of significant positive effect and wide scope of moderate
negative effect, I'd say we've chosen poorly as that will harm society as a
whole rather than help it. Which is why the hard task of getting those numbers
is worth it.

------
woliveirajr
Every time I find interesting (and frighting) that we are nothing but a
collection of ourselves and virus and bacterias, written down to our DNA and
RNA or living together with close dependence deep in our guts (literally).

Going further, a lot of what we do unconciously is just what a virus or
something else "did" to survive or spread in the past, and our free will isn't
that free...

Edit: "did" wasn't meaning that a specific goal was set, for example, but just
that the survival rate was better for certain configuration of atoms

~~~
hellofunk
It's also revealing how the unique ability of humans to overcome their
fundamental biological nature can be quite impressive and inspiring. Humans
have many natural tendencies that are not socially accepted, and better
behavior can be learned and tendencies suppressed. Addicts and alcoholics can
turn their lives around, even though they remain addicts for life.

~~~
coldtea
> _Addicts and alcoholics can turn their lives around, even though they remain
> addicts for life._

The "addicts for life" is an American puritan view (by AA and other such
groups) -- not some scientific fact. Certainly not the view everywhere in the
world. You can have an alcoholic of 5-10 years that recovered and can still
enjoy the occasional drink just fine without getting back to regular drinking.

~~~
mercer
The more specific statements about addicts become, the more cautious I tend to
be.

That said, I do at least agree that your quote is rather particular to AA, and
not shared by other programs, like SMART.

The reason I hesitate to dismiss the AA view is that it strikes me as quite
possible that, for a subset of addicts, any kind of hope of moderation can be
disastrous.

The way I see it, a less dichotomous perspective such as that of SMART is a
better starting point than the 'once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic'
approach of AA. And if SMART doesn't work, AA might very well be the only
solution left.

~~~
hellofunk
> The reason I hesitate to dismiss the AA view is that it strikes me as quite
> possible that, for a subset of addicts, any kind of hope of moderation can
> be disastrous.

This, absolutely this. And since it is impossible to know in advance if
moderation is possible for a given person, AA optimizes for the worst case
scenario and assumes that no one can handle moderation, which has the greatest
likelihood of success for all who use this strategy.

~~~
Frondo
AA isn't so much a recovery program as a submarine Christian conversion
program; it's seldom better than nothing, and often worse. Very consistently
and well-marketed, though.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-
irr...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-
irrationality-of-alcoholics-anonymous/386255/)

(Fun fact: when it started, it wasn't anonymous -- except one of the founders
kept showing up drunk in public, and they realized this itself was pretty
quickly debunking their success claims!)

~~~
hellofunk
I think this is a rather unfair distortion of AA. I know many who have been
tremendously helped by the program. It does work for many. It's explicitly
unreligious -- they have a notion of a higher power, but make the conscious
effort to allow each member to have their own definition of this higher power.
It's not a religious process in the sense most would think of it. I also don't
think it's fair to mention any one particular person's success or lack thereof
with AA when making sweeping generalizations about the program (including the
founder, which I don't know if what you say is actually correct or not -- it
just doesn't matter).

The other important thing that AA does, which is quite critical, is get
individuals with problems frequent, implicit counseling from others who have
been through the same thing. This is very hard to get in modern life in most
other ways. It's possible, but AA makes it the default process. You can throw
away all the other stuff about AA and dismiss it, and you are still left with
the fact social therapy in any form is very effective, and AA promotes that.

~~~
Frondo
When it's been studied for effectiveness, it turns out AA works for between 5%
and 10% of the people in it; as it also turns out, that's about the same
percentage of people for whom _any_ group support program would work.

This isn't a distortion, this is the empirical view of AA.

As for explicitly unreligious, I would like to include the twelve steps here:

1) We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become
unmanageable.

2) Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to
sanity.

3) Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to _the care of God_ as
we understood Him.

4) Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5) _Admitted to God_ , to ourselves, and to another human being the exact
nature of our wrongs.

6) Were entirely ready _to have God remove_ all these defects of character.

7) Humbly asked _Him_ to remove our shortcomings.

8) Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends
to them all.

9) Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so
would injure them or others.

10) Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly
admitted it.

11) Sought through prayer and meditation to _improve our conscious contact
with God_ as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of _His will_ for
us and the power to carry that out.

12) Having had a _spiritual awakening_ as the result of these steps, we tried
to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all
our affairs.

I am struggling to find an unreligious interpretation for steps 3, 5, 6, 7,
11, and 12, even if the "higher power" isn't an Abrahamic religion "God".

What's a spiritual awakening to an atheist?

~~~
TimTheTinker
I think the key here is that people function better, and break addictions
better, when they realize and submit to the concept that they do not (and
can't) have complete power and control over their own lives. The notion of a
"higher power" or "God" can help people get into that posture of "letting go",
which helps them find real support outside of themselves (and their
addictions).

Being a Christian myself, I know I function _much_ better when I'm consciously
in an attitude of trusting God -- it lets me relax and simply be who I am and
do what I need to do, without worrying about "fixing things" outside of my
control. (And yes, I do take an intellectually rigorous approach to my faith,
but that's a different topic.)

~~~
hellofunk
I'm not a religious man myself, but I think your perspective is wiser than
most of those who call themselves Christians, and frankly, I think what you
have expressed here runs deeper than the particulars of any specific religion.

------
jrochkind1
> Not all humans have the same HK2 viruses in their genomes.

Did they take the list of all HK2 viruses, and test them all to see which one
had a prevalence in identified addicts?

If they did that, would they admit it in the paper?

Maybe I've become too cynical, but my default is to assume statistical misuse
these days.

~~~
bagacrap
They mention some very strong results (P< 0.001) which I don't think can be
explained by randomness even if they were to roll the dice several times.

------
lazyjones
Is it possible to just wipe all known virus remains from our DNA and if yes,
what would happen? Would the resulting organism even be able to live?

~~~
cc-d
Considering viral DNA makes up approximately 8% of the human genome,
eliminating it probably wouldn't end too well.

~~~
charlieflowers
The technical debt of the genome. But code that the new folks are afraid to
touch.

------
Communitivity
This so reminds me of the Asherah virus in the great book SnowCrash by Neal
Stephenson. That book is still one of my favorite SFF books ever.

~~~
sebcat
Now all we need to cure addiction is the nam-shub of Enki.

------
mbroncano
Just to add one more sci-fi reference, this reminds me of mind rot virus in A
Deepness in the Sky [0] by Vernor Vinge

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky)

~~~
ridgeguy
I'll add one more sci-fi reference involving HERVs: Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio
[1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_Radio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin%27s_Radio)

------
twodave
There are so many more things than substances to be addicted to. Psychological
dependence on certain behaviors can be just as strong as physical dependence
on a substance.

It looks like this study is focused on drug addiction which on its own is
really intriguing, but I wonder if there would be any evidence in the human
genome to predict behavioral addiction.

~~~
MrEfficiency
I found that I'm addicted to weed, but not harmful drugs.

Alcohol ruins your day.

I can be productive on weed and/or caffeine. Both of them get work done.

I believe I'm addicted to the productivity, when I take them outside of a work
environment, I want to work.

At what point is this positive reinforced habits?

~~~
arbitrage
You're not addicted to weed.

Addiction really has a lot to do with making bad decisions in your life to
keep doing the addictive behaviour.

If its not negatively impacting your life, and it's not interfering with
relationships and obligations, you're not addicted.

~~~
coleifer
I think addiction is: you can't moderate usage even when you want to, and
can't stay stopped even when you want to.

------
scotty79
Genetic test that could tell you: "You most likely won't develop physical
addiction to cocaine." would be a game changer in some demanding professions.

Most people could use cocaine as safely as caffeine but since you have no idea
if you get addicted or not mostly dumb people try and some suffer greatly.

~~~
sjg007
It would be more useful for treatment programs I think.

------
SZJX
I'm still not totally sure how the "causation" part is proven. Just because
the genes must have already existed in human beings long before there were
drugs? Not sure if this is totally convincing though sure, that is indeed
stronger than many other cases as proving causation is really difficult.

------
diyseguy
Is it a particular SNP marker/mutation of the RASGRF2 gene? In my genetic
report there are 99 such markers, I'm wondering if a specific one is mentioned
in the paper.

------
person_of_color
Huh? Viruses can affect human genes? How come I never learnt this in biology?

------
lists
Does this remind anyone of season one of Fortitude on Prime?

------
lisper
I have some bad news for you: your perception of free will is a by-product of
your ignorance of how your brain works. Every decision you think you make is
actually just a bunch of neurons firing, and those neurons were built by your
DNA.

~~~
nardi
No one actually believes this, including you. You may say you do, and even
think you do, but you don’t. Everyone acts as if they and others around them
possess free will. We act that way because that’s what we believe.

Honestly, I don’t think we understand enough about consciousness and how it
arises from physical brains/bodies to make such an extraordinary claim like
“there is no free will,” when the entire history of human thought and
philosophy presupposes that there is.

~~~
lisper
> No one actually believes this, including you.

I'm pretty sure that I'm in a better position to know what I actually believe
than you are, and I'm telling you, I really do believe this. There are only
three possibilities: either free will is an illusion, or dualism is true, or
consciousness is the result of unknown new physics. The first is by far the
most likely from a scientific point of view, and the evidence for it is
actually pretty overwhelming.

But just because it's an illusion doesn't mean that you can't or shouldn't
live your life as if it were real. It's a very compelling illusion as long as
you don't know how the trick is done, and so far, we don't.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I think what _nardi_ is trying to say is that there's no functional difference
between having free will, and acting as if you do.

What decisions do you make differently with your knowledge that free will is
an illusion? What choices do you make differently?

(fwiw, I agree with you; I just think it doesn't particularly matter now.)

~~~
sutterbomb
Well your ethics should shift considerably. Retributive justice is morally
repugnant for someone who does not believe in absolute free will.

~~~
toasterlovin
The existence of punishment changes the inputs to the system and, thus,
changes the outputs of the system. The system in this case being the mind and
it's output being behavior.

~~~
sutterbomb
Right which is why I specifically said retributive justice. Other penal forms
may still be morally justified for the sake of the “system” as it were.

------
jostmey
I see nothing here that suggests the link is causative. It could very well be
that the toll of being an addict compromises the immune system leading to
conditions that most people never get.

~~~
asimpletune
I think they would have to have a separate, additional experiment to rule out
a causal relation.

~~~
jostmey
It's not hard to test this hypothesis. All they have to do is look if the
elderly show the same pattern as addicts. If they do, it suggest that a
weakened immune system leaves the body vulnerable.

------
sandworm101
So what does this say about all the studies on rats, dogs, and all the other
animals we have been using to study addiction? The rats that choose cocaine
over food, are they running a different retrovirus?

~~~
thaumaturgy
The researchers found that the presence of RASGRF2 in their sample populations
went from 6% to 14% and 9.5% to 34% when comparing controls to chronic drug
abusers.

So this means that addiction is a complex, multi-factor condition, and these
researchers may have identified another factor. People with this gene may be
predisposed to addictive behaviors but not behave that way for any number of
environmental or other reasons; likewise, people without the gene may still
develop addictive behaviors.

The researchers didn't study rats or dogs, so there isn't much in the way of
evidence for this gene's presence in those species.

------
FabHK
This brings home the point Sam Harris makes often in his writing and blog (and
books [1]): Our subjective experience of free will and being in control is
largely an illusion.

I used to find that very depressing, but now made peace with compatibilism
(the notion that determinism and free will are compatible) [2][3].

Sam Harris objects to compatibilism: both argue that determinism is true, but
Harris thinks that thus we have no free will, while compatibilists argue that
we still have the "free will worth having" (see the book by Dennett [4]).

Harris and Dennett had an insightful podcast/debate on that [5].

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/books/review/free-will-
by...](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/books/review/free-will-by-sam-
harris.html)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism)

[3]
[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbow_Room_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbow_Room_\(book\))

[5] [https://samharris.org/podcasts/free-will-
revisited/](https://samharris.org/podcasts/free-will-revisited/)

