My Father Didn't Go to War

(I realize this is kind of rambling, but I wanted to get it posted. I've really been getting swept up with this kind of research into who we all are and what we are becoming)

        The Scientific American has a very brief report this month (April 2016) about how orphaned bugs, earwigs in this case, who were deserted by their parents, grow up to be less attentive parents themselves.  Apparently most earwigs are watchful and devoted to their eggs and nymphs, but those who did not receive such attention did not administer such caring behavior to their offspring.

The report did not say if this was then carried on through future generations, or if these unattended children had a lower rate of survival, and thus were slowly eliminated from the gene pool. In fact it did say that the first generation of unattended children grew bigger and stronger than their peers.  It was not until they became parents that they showed the effects of their lack of maternal care.

Joel Meurnier,  a evolutionary biologist who is at the University of Tours, France, said that these studies could reflect goes on in humans. He noted that these insects represent one of the most primitive forms of family life, which evolved from there. That prompted me to begin to search for studies of humans, and to see if any research has found if some of the effects of the trauma of losing a parent early in life can be genetically transmitted to the next generation.

Searching around the web, which is much easier than going to the library and searching through six hundred journals, which is what I had to do in grad school, revealed that there are  studies that show that there are several ways in which the effects of trauma can be transmitted to the next generation.  One of the ways seems to be directly through the genes of both the mother and the father.

Anyone who has dealt with families has seen that traumatized parents, such as concentration camp survivors, often raised their children in an atmosphere of fear and distrust. Many of their children learned to be constantly vigilant.  Much of this was understandable, given the life experiences of both the parents and children.  So it is possible that  environmental factors could explain much of the behavior of these children. It is difficult to determine if their are biological causes as well.

Then I found an article by Virginia Hughes that was published in Nature in April of 2014.  She cites a study done by Isabelle Mansuy  of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, who found changes in the RNA in the sperm of mice who had been traumatized.  This seemed to be one vehicle by which a tendency towards anxiety and depression was passed down to the next generation.

There are other studies that show that this happens to the genetics of the mother also. There is a growing recognition that the causes of anxiety, depression and other behavior patterns are not just environmental, and not just inherited traits that have been passed through many generations, but are also epigenetic.  That means that environmental events that happen in one generation can be passed on to the next.  For over a century, this kind of thinking was rejected.  Evolution was not supposed to be so directly affected by the life experiences of an individual.  But there is increasing evidence that things are more complex and more interactive.

From these studies I made a huge speculative jump and began to wonder: 

As you may have realized by now I am not good at details, but big picture stuff always floats through my mind.  I was reading and thinking about the 20th Century. It was a time of many awful traumas, most of which were worse than what is going on today.  The wars and the severe economic depressions affected nearly everyone, all over the world.  Entire cities, countries and even continents were devastated.  Many millions of people were killed, many more had their homes destroyed, were turned into refugees.  Millions more, who may not have been directly, physically harmed, were still subjected to constant fear, anger and horror that lasted for years.

The first world war made no sense, especially to those who were fighting it.  There were national rivalries between the leaders of countries, but the people who fought the battles really felt no natural animosity toward each other.  Yet, at the Battle of Verdun, in WWI, men lived in trenches for months, just yards away from each other, killing each other one at a time until 800,000 people had died. The men who survived were never the same, psychologically. They were traumatized , yet that was rarely recognized as such. Although there were descriptions of “battle fatigue” and “shell shock,”  no one knew how to treat it.

WWII was worse in terms of devastation and death.  The weapons were more powerful and came from greater distances, culminating in two nuclear bombs falling on Japan.  There were invasions of The Soviet Union that killed millions.  Japan invaded China with traumatic effects. There were large revolutions and coups in Africa in which hundred of thousands if not millions of people were killed and displaced.

Many of these soldiers were referred to as “The Greatest Generation” and hailed as heroes.  The standard behavior seemed to be that most of them did not talk about the war.  They tried to be stoic and move on, rejoin society and have a life. Was this possible?  I doubt it.

That’s what brings me back to the kind of research that I cited above.  It now seems likely that the effects of trauma can be carried through the sperm of the father, and by cell changes in the blood of the pregnant mother. To state it in the more exact language of one study: “the role of glucocorticoid hormones in signaling and epigenetic mechanisms participating in the effects of stress on gene transcription in hippocampal neurons” can be passed on to the next generation. (Johannes M. H. M. Reul*, Psychiatry, 22 January 2014).

What that means is that trauma affects the RNA of the person who experiences it, and that these genetic changes can be passed on to his or her offspring, and that those offspring are more likely to experience anxiety and depression than children whose parents were not traumatized.  Anxiety runs rampant through my generation, the baby boomers. 

I don’t mean to diminish he suffering of previous generations.  I don’t know if Russian serfs felt traumatized or just accepted life as it was. There have always been wars, plagues, invasions, slaughter and trauma.  I can only imagine that most American slaves, especially those who actually made the crossing, were greatly affected.  Certainly, by today’s standards, most human lives were short and miserable for thousands of years.  But they didn’t have today’s standards; the kind of life we live today was unimaginable.

What was the effect of going to war on the men who returned from battle, in any generation?   Were they more distant emotionally?  How did that affect their marriages?  Their parenting skills?  Their politics?  

There were no studies done about this afterWorld War II, and certainly none done after the Battle of Waterloo or at Hastings.  War was too common then to think that such a study would be necessary.  Now, during America’s prolonged wars in the Middle East there have been many studies.  They show that there are many difficulties of sending a parent off to war,problems with the soldier, the spouse and the children. Psychologists are trying to find ways to minimized the damage.

My generation was the first to really have psychologists and psychotherapy offered to everyone.  Through many technical and social advances we have much higher expectations for the quality of our lives.  We do not expect to suffer, to live in fear, to feel constantly victimized, or to watch our children die.  We were also the first generation, possibly in the history of the world, in which many of its members stood up to the government and refused to go to war. We were more sensitive to social justice, more skeptical of power, and a bit more selfish and spoiled.   

Due to his age and other physical restraints, my father did not go to war.  He was not traumatized, and was a pretty open and accessible father, at least for his generation.  That probably helped shape who I became. Some of the folks who also marched against the war in Vietnam had fathers who had been soldiers  in WWII,with whom many had difficult relationships.

These are things that make me wonder. Is it possible that being in battle not only changed the soldiers emotionally, it changed them genetically?  If that is the case, that would help explain why so many veterans are still suffering, even after years of treatment. The only studies I found of genetics of Vietnam veterans and their children focused on Agent Orange and on major birth defects.  What I would look for would be much more subtle, and probably is too difficult to find after so many years.  

For me the question remains: how much of a tendency toward anxiety, depression and anger has been passed on through both genetics and epigenetics?  If some of the results of a personal trauma can be passed on from one generation to the next, how much does it have ripple effects through our society, or any society that has suffered major disruptions.  Why do some regions, such as the Balkans or the Middle East seem to have such insolvable problems, that go on for generation after generation. Also, how much do epigenetic effects explain some of the families I have seen that have been full of physical and sexual abuse for a few generations?

The follow-up question is even more intriguing: can some of these epigenetic changes be undone in a generation?  Can people learn to trust and be more open and caring.  If so, would these  positive experiences create changes in a father’s sperm, or a mothers cortisol level that would be passed on to the next generation?

It turns out that such research has already begun.  There are studies which show that mindfulness training does produce some of these effects.  Many people who learn to meditate in a meaningful way report feeling calmer and have a more positive outlook.  They also show physiological changes in their genes that affect inflammation and other aspects of body chemistry that affect mood.  It is not yet knows if they changes can be transmitted to the next generation. 

But it would be helpful if we could get the whole world to chill-out for an hour a day, and pass the effects on to the next generation.  I know a woman who is advocating this, an evangelical Buddhist.  Now I understand it more, on a cellular level.  But she’s not getting much traction so far, especially in today’s political climate.  Still, we’ve got to start somewhere, and it certainly can’t hurt.