I just came across an interesting bit of science news, in which scientists have discovered a correlation between psychopathy and a specific abnormality in the formation of the uncinate fasciculus, which connects the amygdala (where emotions and aggression are processed) and the orbitofrontal cortex (the decision-making center).

Using a precise form of MRI, Murphy studied the brains of those labeled as psychopaths who had been convicted of crimes ranging from manslaughter to repeated rapes. The imaging found “a significant reduction in the integrity of the small particles that make up the structure of the UF of psychopaths, compared to control groups of people with the same age and IQ. Also, the degree of abnormality was significantly related to the degree of psychopathy.”

Now, of course the issue of criminal proceedings comes up in the article, but what I’m more interested in is, assuming this degeneration is indeed primarily responsible for psychopathic behaviour, should we treat people with brain degeneration like this as inherently dangerous? Or is it just a function of their nature? Can we “cure” their psychopathy through surgery or drugs? Is it worth doing at all? And if we did, could those people live with the violent and depraved behaviour that they’d exhibited prior to being cured? But if it’s cost or time prohibitive, knowing that genes probably resulted in this mutation, could we be dooming future generations to the potential to go psychopathic as well? Would we be dampening the effects of natural selection by allowing faulty mutated and/or recessive genes to propagate?

There are a lot of moral implications here, and I’m honestly not sure what I think just yet. I do feel an obligation to help these people, especially since it’s not their fault they went psychotic. But I don’t know whether curing them would be a net good for society, if we’d just be allowing the genes for psychosis to pass to the next generation. That is, of course, assuming it’s even genetic, rather than some external damage, e.g. bacterial or viral or prion-based.