Violent crime rate tracks lead poisoning levels two decades earlier

"Although crime did fall dramatically in New York during Giuliani's tenure, a broad range of scientific research has emerged in recent years to show that the mayor deserves only a fraction of the credit that he claims. The most compelling information has come from an economist in Fairfax who has argued in a series of little-noticed papers that the "New York miracle" was caused by local and federal efforts decades earlier to reduce lead poisoning.

The theory offered by the economist, Rick Nevin, is that lead poisoning accounts for much of the variation in violent crime in the United States. It offers a unifying new neurochemical theory for fluctuations in the crime rate, and it is based on studies linking children's exposure to lead with violent behavior later in their lives.

What makes Nevin's work persuasive is that he has shown an identical, decades-long association between lead poisoning and crime rates in nine countries. "It is stunning how strong the association is," Nevin said in an interview. "Sixty-five to ninety percent or more of the substantial variation in violent crime in all these countries was explained by lead."

. . . Most of the theories [on why crime has declined in recent decades] have been long on intuition and short on evidence. Nevin says his data not only explain the decline in crime in the 1990s, but the rise in crime in the 1980s and other fluctuations going back a century. His data from multiple countries, which have different abortion rates, police strategies, demographics and economic conditions, indicate that lead is the only explanation that can account for international trends.

Because the countries phased out lead at different points, they provide a rigorous test: In each instance, the violent crime rate tracks lead poisoning levels two decades earlier. [italics added] "

Article in Washington Post

I find this fascinating, and immensely disturbing. Disturbing because it’s more evidence (to me, at least) for a wholly materialistic theory of personality. In addition, although I’m happy to be a Presbyterian, I don’t find this particular kind of predestination very comforting.

The fact that minute amounts of various chemicals can have profound effects upon our personalities – you might as well say upon our souls – is something that anyone interested in theorizing about sin and responsibility should find very, very troubling. We have abundant evidence that it’s so – just look at antidepressants and various other mood-altering chemicals, including such stand-bys as alcohol. There’s also the evidence of inherited genetic defects, and problems of metabolism, and so on.

Sometimes an invisible miniature alteration to a gene or bond or process somewhere in these astounding bodies of ours has profound effects upon stuff that we like to think of as immaterial and also basically under our control – our wishes, thoughts, habits, inclinations, personalities, abilities, moods, -- ourselves.

The older I get, the less I am inclined to think we should punish folks who have trouble doing the right thing. The more I am inclined to think, “There but by the grace of God (or my metabolism, or my genes) go I.”

I am reminded of a friend who has worked for many years with the mentally ill homeless and semi-homeless population in Philadelphia, who says that at the end of it all, her conclusion is “They’re doing the best they can. We’re all doing the best we can. But it’s a lot harder for them than for us.”

Photo courtesy Flickruser Dominic's pics