A Biological Look at Suicide Essay -- Biology Essays Research Papers

Efficiency Above All: A Biological Look at Suicide "And let me ask you this; the dead, where aren't they?" – Franz Wright, New Yorker Magazine, Oct. 6, 2003 "Dear Mom and Dad," the letter begins benignly, "Thank you for all of your commitment. But I am not a suitable daughter, and you will all be better off without me. Please realize I have done this for your own good." Nothing more. And beside it, Mr. and Mrs. A find their daughter, dead by her own hand. So begin the episodes of anguished soul-searching, of horrific "if-onlys" experienced by the family members of countless suicides. Anyone who has faced what Mr. and Mrs. A now grapple with knows that the girl is wrong: they will not be better off, not feel happier, without her. Yet each year, thousands of suicide victims express similar convictions: I am killing myself, they reassure us, for your own good. This thinking – this appeal for selflessness that our society cannot condone – where does it come from? Why, in truth, do people kill themselves? The problem of suicide ravages the minds of its survivors – of philosophers – and, more recently, of psychologists. We simply cannot understand it. Why suicide? While many non-biological scientists are inclined to define suicide as a conscious act – thereby excluding, perhaps, all non-human self-inflicted deaths (1), (2) – lets us stick with the more basic definition of suicide as self-murder, with or without cognitive "knowledge" or "intent" (***). And, as the concerned psychologists plunge on in their direction, let us examine this problem from a different standpoint, that of biology. In order to make sense of the biology of suicide, however, we must first understand the more general omnipresent phenomenon: death.... ...ants, a good description of self-destruction of cells, this time in plants http://www.sebiology.org/bulletin/july2002/plant.htm 9)Foucault , Michael. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Random House: New York, 1977. 10) Weizmann Institute of Science: Death of a Cell, a discussion of one series of studies of cellular apoptosis http://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/site/EN/weizman.asp?pi=422&doc_id=436&interID=138&sq=138 NOT CITED IN TEXT 11) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1997/07/970722090258.htm>Stopping "Cellular Suicide" Could Boost Production in Biotech Labs, a look at some of the cons of cellular suicide in terms of technology 12)Researchers Find New Way to Trigger Self-Destruction of Certain Cancer Cells, a scheme for putting cellular suicide to use for humans! http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-06/sjcr-rfn061803.php