Epigenetics: Can Tragedies Be Inherited?

Rare is the generation that has not experienced some tragedy. When they have not been wars, they have been famines, genocides or brutal economic crises. We know the physical and psychological consequences, often devastating, that people can develop after an experience of this type. But can tragedies be inherited?

What had not been contemplated until a few years ago is that these types of experiences seem to leave a genetic residue in those who suffer them that can also be transmitted to the following generations. Studies that have been carried out with animals show this.

Despite this, human research presents a clear ethical problem, making it extremely difficult to determine to what extent and how we humans also genetically inherit the tragedies and sufferings of our parents and grandparents.

Social psychology, first access route

But what has been possible are some massive experiments in the field of social psychology. And the results couldn’t be more revealing. These studies, conducted across generations, show us that we can inherit tragedies, just like animals.

Social psychology cannot determine which genetic mechanism, which type of mutation, or which gene is altered, but it has discovered that there are even gender-differentiated inheritance patterns. Something that is revolutionizing the world of psychology, sociology and genetic research.

Finland and the Second World War

A study carried out by the team of Dr. Torsten Santavirta, from the University of Uppsala, found that the daughters of children who were evacuated from Finland in World War II suffered much more problems of hospitalization for psychological disorders  than other people whose parents they were not evacuated.

The investigation also showed that this fact did not appear to have affected the male children of the evacuated children. This fascinating fact has been tried to explain by the fact that mental illnesses in men, in general, are less common. But even so, the coincidence is astonishing.

Confederate soldiers

Another study conducted with the descendants of Confederate soldiers who passed through the Andersonville, Georgia prison camp during the War of the United States Succession, yields data very similar to that of Finland.

The children of prison camp survivors lived considerably less than the children of other war veterans who had not been taken prisoner. Many of them were even found to have passed away much younger than their older siblings who had been born before the war. That is, before their parents went through the trauma and could transmit it.

The grandchildren of the holocaust could inherit the tragedy

One of the first published studies was conducted on concentration camp survivors under the Nazi regime. The research team at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York studied the genetic makeup of a group of Jews who had been in concentration camps and compared it with that of their children.

The study focused on a specific region of a gene associated with the regulation of stress hormones and it was found that both survivors and their children had this gene affected by inherited trauma. To guarantee the results, parallel genetic analyzes were carried out to rule out the possibility that the children, the second generation, could have modified the gene due to some traumatic experience of their own.

The inexplicable gender differentiation

Along with all the above, there is another inexplicable data so far. Just as the inheritance of trauma in the case of children evacuated from Finland appears to have been transmitted only to daughters, in the case of prisoners of war the data is reversed. It seems that in this case the inheritance of the trauma was only received by the male children.

All of this research is bringing to light knowledge that can be extremely important for the future of human physical and mental health. It seems that human beings can inherit the tragedies that happened to our ancestors. Although at the moment the studies are raising many more questions than answers.