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Comment by mmaunder | Hacker News Reader

This relates to policy because it addresses the question of whether we carry epigenetic baggage from prior generations. For example, trauma that our parents, or grandparents experienced could lead to behavior modifications and poorer outcomes in us. If that is the case, it has profound public policy implications.

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There is a vast gap between current epigenetic inheritance science in humans and all of the theories that epigenetic inheritance is a substantial carrier of inter generational trauma.

We’re still trying to figure out how much, if any, epigenetic inheritance applies to humans. If we did find some evidence, it wouldn’t be as simple as declaring that the trauma of previous generations harmed offspring. For example, it could be equally likely that offspring of prior generations that endured a lot of stress were actually more stress resilient and therefore received some advantages.

> If that is the case, it has profound public policy implications.

I disagree. As I said above, anyone jumping to conclusions that epigenetic inheritance could only confer negative traits is trying to force another concept (inter-generational trauma) into a convenient scientific carrier to make it appear to be a more valid policy position.

There's some long running research on the effect in humans like this:

https://theconversation.com/moms-prenatal-hardship-turns-bab...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26098974/

Those are articles about maternal stress during pregnancy.

The trans-generational epigenetic inheritance proponents claim that trauma can induce lasting generational effects spanning multiple levels of descendants, even if it doesn’t occur during to the mother during pregnancy.

The paper this HN submission is talking about claims to have found an effect like this that persists for 4 generations.

A key problem with the inter generational trauma proponents is that they presume the effects will only be negative. However, studies like this one showed a positive adaptation. Evolutionarily, it would make more sense if epigenetic mechanisms generally conferred benefits and learned adaptations, which goes against the narratives that anything negative would produce lasting negative effects. It’s not entirely that simple, but it reveals why the intergenerational trauma equals epigenetic inheritance people are starting with a conclusion and trying to get the science to fit their narrative, which is backward from how it should be.

I suppose one would have to follow the cohort and see if the epigenetic changes observed so far carry over into their own children. I do find it interesting that stress in the mother becomes higher BMI in the offspring. It makes sense if you're talking about animals trying to survive in a harsh environment.

I agree with you there's a lot hand-wavy jumping to conclusions and claims human effects often feel like pop pseudo-science. However I do think when folks imply that epigenetic effects are negative they tend to point towards things like anxiety and fear. Anxiety very well could have a protective evolutionary benefit if you assume the next generation will also be born in a high-risk environment, but a generation later these qualities would be perceived as a negative consequence.

Another example is famine, it may be advantegous to store visceral fat in a low food environment, but if the famine ends, the next generation is more likely to carry this "advantage" which is now negative: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S216183132...

> trauma that our parents, or grandparents experienced could lead to behavior modifications and poorer outcomes in us

The nurture part of it is already well established, this is the nature part of it.

However, this is not a net-positive for the folks who already discriminate.

The "faults in our genes" thinking assumes that this is not redeemable by policy changes, so it goes back to eugenics and usually suggests cutting such people out of the gene pool.

The "better nurture" proponents for the next generation (free school lunches, early intervention and magnet schools) will now have to swim up this waterfall before arguing more investment into the uplifting traumatized populations.

We need to believe that Change (with a capital C) is possible right away if start right now.

I would think it's the opposite. Intervention is preventative of further sliding. The alternative - genocide - is expensive; they're generally a luxury of states benefiting from a theft-based windfall.

This would require that it's a one-way door, where bad circumstances persist indefinitely across generations but good circumstances don't. It would also require that to not stretch back too far, since bad circumstances were rather universal before the modern age.

In order for this supposed oddly specific effect to have policy implications, it would have to be simple to identify which individuals are impacted and by how much. And it would have to be impossible to identify such individuals except by looking at their family history.

And there would have to be some policy action that is uniquely beneficial to those people.

an RNA interference scan of maternal gametic DNA would go a long way toward revealing identified epigenetic modifications; also would not be cheap.

this would also be accompanied by interviews, that would reveal high risk factors, as well as very intimate details of family history.

the payoff would have to be large, something more than the wellbeing of a single person from start to end, until we collectively grow up a bit more as a species.

Yes, unscientific people will misuse it to support their racist ideas of black people inheriting trauma from slavery. They already do, but they're also extrapolating way beyond what research actually shows.

They've discovered that eggs from women with certain medical conditions (including stress and poor diet) produce embryos with shorter telomeres, and in middle age the shorter telomeres lead to premature aging and a raft of health problems.

related: sperm from male rats who drink heavily produces children and grandchildren with reduced brain size and abnormal behavior -- there's an epigenetic male 'fetal alcohol syndrome'

But fortunately “We provide proof-of-concept that DNA resetting can be modulated in embryos where it is deficient, using currently available drugs, to influence telomere length at birth" https://www.adelaide.edu.au/robinson-research-institute/news...

What policy implications? Obviously wealth, class, race, nationality, and genetics are all highly heritable, what's one more twig on the pile of the birth lottery?

This sort of thing is always a call for generational guilt and reparations.

It’s also a good argument for not allowing children to be victims of their parents’ circumstances. Which is the heart of compulsory schooling and school lunch and a whole host of other things.

The consequences could be terrible if it were intentionally weaponised by a government looks at the Russian empire.

An absurd take. The ‘trauma’ people, baggage handlers de nos jours, have already weaponised the phenomenon for political points, before we even know definitively if it exists. Hey ho.

Incidentally, nobody yet I see has suggested that epigenetics could lead to better outcomes. I wonder why?

Me, once again tapping the, "If they had done genetic studies on the Dutch at the beginning of the 19th century, genetic patterns currently associated with exceptional adult height may have instead been associated with exceptional short stature," sign.

What social democracy does to a dude('s growth spurts). If people ever internalized that socioeconomic circumstances have material and profound effects on not only their own health and development, but also that of their children and children's children, both in the positive and negative direction... Man.

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