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

Efficiency Above All A Biological Look at self-destructionAnd let me ask you this the dead,where arent they? Franz Wright, New Yorker Magazine, Oct. 6, 2003Dear Mom and Dad, the letter begins benignly, Thank you for all of your commitment. But I am not a suitable daughter, and you leading all be better off without me. Please realize I have done this for your witness 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 k ill themselves? The problem of suicide ravages the minds of its survivors of philosophers and, more recently, of psychologists. We simply cannot visualize 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 record the more general omnipresent phenomenon death.... ...ants, a good description of self-destruction of cells, this time in plantshttp//www.sebiology.org/bulletin/july2002/plant.htm9)Foucault , Michael. Discipline and Punish The Birth of the Prison. Random endure New York, 1977.10) Weizmann Institute of Science De ath 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=138not CITED IN TEXT11) http//www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1997/07/970722090258.htmStopping Cellular Suicide Could Boost Production in Biotech Labs, a look at some of the cons of cellular suicide in hurt of technology 12)Researchers Find New Way to Trigger Self-Destruction of Certain Cancer Cells, a scheme for putting cellular suicide to use for humanity http//www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-06/sjcr-rfn061803.php