The Genetics of Schizophrenia | Tracking the Origins of the "Cancer of the Mind"

The Genetics of Schizophrenia Tracking the Origins of the "Cancer of the Mind": "In 1959, John Nash, a brilliant, but somewhat odd, 30-year-old mathematician at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, experienced the first of several delusional episodes that would lead to his breakdown and that would cause him to spend many years hospitalized. In 1994, as his disease was waning, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for work in game theory performed in his 20s. A movie about his life, A Beautiful Mind, and a PBS television program, A Brilliant Madness, introduced the general public to his disease, schizophrenia. In a filmed interview for PBS, Nash provides a glimpse of his experience as a schizophrenic:
I had this feeling of persecution. I had the idea that some of the people, I think Eisenhower was still president then, and the Pope and the powers that be might be unsympathetic to me. I envisioned a hidden world where the Communists and non-Communists were into this thing—they were sort of schemers ... I got the idea that I would receive a message somehow. Later on, I felt that I might get a divine revelation by seeing a certain number that would appear. A great coincidence could be interpreted as a message from heaven."
Though sometimes called "the cancer of the mind," schizophrenia remains much more mysterious than the diseases we know as cancer, according to Daniel Weinberger of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), speaking at the June 7, 2006, session of the Academy's Genomic Medicine Discussion Group. "We know that one way or another, cancer genes disrupt the regulation of the cell cycle," he told the audience. "We don't know what schizophrenia is at a biological level." He predicted that the human genome project may have more impact on our understanding of mental disorders than on any other area of medicine, because the genes scientists discover will provide crucial information about the mechanisms of these diseases./.../"