Are you crazy? - Schizophrenia

The Insanity Virus

Labels and Definitions
Schizophrenia - A virus affecting the mind and how one thinks. It often causes paranoia attacks, hallucinations, and haunting voices that occur for no reason and without a source. Without any proof of what people are looking at, others begin to classify these people as "insane," instead of what should be the correct term "people that can see and hear things (like the supernatural) that others cannot."

Gene - A distinct order of information that makes up part of a chromosome, which is then passed from parents to children in a long hereditary line. It is what makes you, you. Without one, or with an extra copy of one, you (the reader) would not be able to be alive, because most of the time it would be fatal if this occurs, or you (the reader) would have disabilities.

Summary - 
"The Insanity Virus" written by Douglas Fox, a freelance science and environment journalist, explains what schizophrenia is and why. Schizophrenia is a disease of the insane. It, itself is caused by an infection when one is young. For each person, the reaction to an infection is different, and genetically enhanced. A certain reaction trigger caused by an infection will make a gene react. This gene is the schizophrenia gene hidden inside us all;
only when it a certain reaction to a certain infection usually around a certain time of year (fall to late winter) will sometimes cause this gene to react. Because the many different reactions are varying so much, the many different types of schizophrenia vary as well from hallucinations, hearing voices, receiving messages from beyond, absolute paranoia, and problems with understanding facial expressions of those around the person. Even though this is the case, the fact that the gene is in all of us makes schizophrenia the most common insanity disease or mental problem that people have, affecting about one percent of one hundred people, which is about 68,849,807 people of the world's average population of 6,884,980,655 people this year (a lot).

If a cure against schizophrenia is found, "the questions [and searching] may be silenced - and so may the voices of schizophrenia."(The Insanity Virus).


Discussion
Searching through a sea of words, looking for one to catch my eye or even my mind, this one did. It grasped my attention and held on it as if to never let go. In school, I noticed that a lot of times my

A Theoretical World of a Schizophrenic

friends and I call each other (sarcastically, of course) crazy and, or stupid (which would never happen at Harker, would it?), but now we have proof of the other person's insanity hidden inside him or her.
It also interested me, because it talked about genes. I, loving the human anatomy, was absorbed into the subject and absolutely stunned by the results. Wow, everyone is crazy (what a shocker!). Also, what caught my attention was the fact that schizophrenia was in everyone, but the gene, which activated by a person's white blood cell response to an infection at a young age, is not always the same in every person. If responding a certain way, this gene will lead to schizophrenia in the person. This is because of the (as written earlier) reaction of the white blood cells to the infection.

What causes the reaction of the white blood cells is a genetic quality and is passed down through the families often causing more than one person to become schizophrenic. This is also why most people

A White Blood Cell Surrounded by Red Blood Cells

believed it was the way parents brought children up, to believe in imaginary friends, to being anti-social, caused schizophrenia.
Being schizophrenic is the fault of a person's genes along with the infection that started it all. Even though everyone has the crazy gene along with the ability to become schizophrenic, the genetic differences between humans causes diversity in types of schizophrenia and who will show the symptoms of them.

Questions

1. If schizophrenia is in all of us, how come it does not occur even more than it already does?
2. If doctors can figure out the exact gene (spoken of in the discussion) and what it is made of, is it possible for them to reverse the effects of if and place it back into the bloodstream, creating an organism that cannot become schizophrenic?
3. If schizophrenia is in us all, are there symptoms before it occurs, and if these are caught early enough, is there a preventative drug or treatment to help defeat schizophrenia before it occurs?

Bibliography

• About-HealthTopicsA~Z. N.p.. n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 2010 <http://adams.about.com/reports/Schizophrenia.htm>.
• Fox, Douglas. "The Insanity Virus." Mind & Brain/Mental Health. Discover: Science, Technology and The Future, n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 2010. <http://discovermagazine.com/2010/jun/03-the-insanity-virus/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=>.
• Swaminathan, Nikhil. "A New Genetic Model for Schizophrenia." Scientific American. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 2010.<http://www.scientificamericna.com/article.cfm?id=new-genetic-model-schi>.