tendrini
Padawan Learner
This article showed up in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution and seemed a little outrageous for a newspaper to print. It was written by Daniel G. Amen, "a neuropsychiatrist and director of the Amen Clinic". The gist of the article is that since the technology exists, maybe it would be a good idea to do brains scans of presidential candidates to determine if they are disfunctional. I will quote a few of the points made - I have been unable to locate the article anywhere on the newspaper's website.
"What do Rudy Giuliani's messy personal life, John McCain's temper and Hillary Clinton's inability to seem authentic have in common? Mayby nothing. They may be just overblown issues in the otherwise normal lives of candidates under the political microscope. "
"Such symptoms, however, may mean a lot - such as evidence of underlying brain dysfunction. Sometimes people with messy personal lives have low prefontal cortex activity associated with poor judgement; sometimes people with temper problems have brain damage and impulse-control problems; sometimes people who struggle with authenticity have trouble really seening things from someone else's perspective."
"One could argue that our current president's struggles with language and emotional rigidity are symptoms of temporal lobe pathology."
"A national leader with brain problems can potentially cost millions of people their lives."
"Functional scans provide a window into the brain. Doctors can now see healthy or dysfunctional brain patterns, much as we can assess the strength of a heart or measure hormone levels, and recognize trouble. All doctors might not agree on the interpretation, but there is a growing body of scientific literature establishing what these scans mean. Maybe we shouldn't leave the health of our president's brain to chance. We have the tools; shouldn't we look?"
"What do Rudy Giuliani's messy personal life, John McCain's temper and Hillary Clinton's inability to seem authentic have in common? Mayby nothing. They may be just overblown issues in the otherwise normal lives of candidates under the political microscope. "
"Such symptoms, however, may mean a lot - such as evidence of underlying brain dysfunction. Sometimes people with messy personal lives have low prefontal cortex activity associated with poor judgement; sometimes people with temper problems have brain damage and impulse-control problems; sometimes people who struggle with authenticity have trouble really seening things from someone else's perspective."
"One could argue that our current president's struggles with language and emotional rigidity are symptoms of temporal lobe pathology."
"A national leader with brain problems can potentially cost millions of people their lives."
"Functional scans provide a window into the brain. Doctors can now see healthy or dysfunctional brain patterns, much as we can assess the strength of a heart or measure hormone levels, and recognize trouble. All doctors might not agree on the interpretation, but there is a growing body of scientific literature establishing what these scans mean. Maybe we shouldn't leave the health of our president's brain to chance. We have the tools; shouldn't we look?"
