IGMS: A Scientific Obituary

My March 2017 column for the Intergalactic Medicine Show explores evolutionary explanations for suicide, through the case of my older brother, who took his own life seven years ago this spring.  Suicide has been a real puzzle for evolutionary theory, because it seems to go against the idea of evolving towards the goals of survival and mating.  If those genes that contribute to suicide are being removed from the population, why doesn't the trait go away?

 [image by Alyse Chen]

I don't go much into events at the time, or my own reactions, partly because I was so dissociated from the shock that I don't remember much about them.  I did end up developing a unit on suicide that I've used a number of times with students, in a controlled classroom environment, but never delivered publicly.  This short column was based on some of that research, plus other readings I've done for my own benefit in the years since.