happens, most Americans are truly loving and respectful of the dead and their loved ones. I do not include the media–they see ratings.

What I don’t like, no matter from whom it comes, is the use of the word “evil.” The men who plotted and destroyed lives on 9/11? Evil.

The young man who killed several in Arizona not long ago? Mentally ill. A schizophrenic.

The Va Tech killer? He didn’t live, but had he, we’d find the same. There are enough clues he left behind to indicate he suffered from mental illness.

Holmes? I’ll wait. However, all the signs point to mental illness, probably schizophrenia. It usually starts showing subtle signs in late teen years, then progresses in the sufferer’s twenties.

Instead of talk of gun control and talk of “evil” we ought to be educating the public about mental illness. Most people, unfortunately, don’t understand that mental illness is a biological phenomenon, not a psychological one. People aren’t “made” mentally ill by their society or by their parents or by their experiences. It is a BIOLOGICAL occurrence.

With our new technologies, the last ten years have begun to answer questions about the brain and the changes it undergoes. We can see the structural damage that has been wrought in many cases. The cause? The etiology is becoming a bit clearer. Growing evidence points to a viral trigger in mental illness, although bacterial triggers are still possible. (We know of a horrid neurological reaction to a strep infection in children called PANDAS= pediatric autoimmune neurological disorder associated with strep).

There is evidence that a common parasite, toxoplasma gondii, is the cause of mental illness, particularly schizophrenia, in some families. Our genes protect us. (You’d not know that by listening to or reading what the press puts out.) They have evolved to do so. However, pathogens evolve more quickly than we can evolve defenses to them.

While you may have genes that give you great protection against pathogen X, I have inherited genes that give me great protection against pathogen Y. But there are genetic trade-offs. The genes I have inherited that protect me wonderfully against Y might not work as effectively against pathogen X, and should I meet up with pathogen X, especially at a particularly susceptible age or time in my life (maybe my defenses are low because I am battling a common cold), I might fall victim to a chronic, unseen infection, the effects of which don’t show up for decades. I might fall ill at a certain period of development, say, the young adult stage when schiz, bi-polar disease, depression, all the the things that lead to “unexpected” violence and/or suicide, come to fruition.

It saddens me that in every instance when the press has an open window to educate the public about the biological processes of mental illness, they fail. They were quite willing to believe that the AZ murderer was created by Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, but once it was determined he was a schizophrenic, they lost interest.

That we are so accepting of the concept of illness as it relates to the other organs of the body–the heart, the liver, the stomach, the lungs, the pancreas–and that laymen are stuck in the age of Freud , who got it all wrong but who can’t really be blamed for getting it wrong considering the state of research in those days, makes me sad and makes me angry.

I don’t think it does a bit of good to apply the adjective “evil” to this and I wish Mitt Romney hadn’t used the word. Let’s wait and see what we find out about Holmes. I think you know and I know the likelihood is that he suffers from mental illness.

If the mentally ill continue to be branded as “evil,” what hope have we of getting them help, of changing public policy so that a doctor or a family can persuade a judge to commit them for observation? Yes, yes, I know, you might try to argue that the sufferer isn’t “evil” only his actions. That’s a needless distinction in this case.

If you wish to argue theology ( believe me, I don’t), then in arguing that mental illness is Lucifer’s doing, you’d have to argue that the common flu and the common cold are as well, and there’s no way that sort of argumentation helps medical research nor our political causes.

I do indeed believe evil exists. I believe people who are sane do indeed commit acts of evil. However, the mentally ill are not sane. They suffer from biological illness.

I am willing to put my money on this: this very bright teenager suspected something wasn’t “right” in his head although he knew not what was “different.” As a result, he pursued a course of study in neuroscience, hoping to understand himself. No one picked up on what was going on.

Let’s not use “evil” until we know.

Drudge has up a pic of Holmes. His countenance does indeed bear *subtle* similarities to the facial expressions we noted in the pic of the AZ killer.

Unfortunately, Drudge has these words under the picture: “Smirk of the Batman psycho.”

It’s hard to urge people who are feeling different, feeling “not quite right,” to seek medical attention before they’ve gone off the deep end when society attaches “psycho” to those who need the help.

I didn’t see it yesterday here but I did see CK’s words on Fox.

It’s time the networks, including Fox, did some John Stossel-type educating on this matter.