Comment on risch et al

Thank you for covering this topic, it is nice that you think the Risch et al paper is newsworthy. Thank you also for contacting us. We are currently travelling, and thus are unable to take part in an interview. However, we provide the following comments, which we hope are useful for you. Our overall summary is: What is needed is not less research into gene-environment interaction, as Risch et al recommend, but more research of better quality, and a more thorough and thoughtful evaluation of it. There are 4 points we think your readers ought to understand. 1. This article ignores the complete body of scientific evidence. In the past 6 years, extensive research in experimental neuroscience using both animals and humans has validated the original report by showing that 5-HTTLPR short allele-carriers are excessively vulnerable to stress. Experimental studies that expose human participants to stressors in the laboratory show that individuals having the 5-HTTLPR short genotype have greater stress responses on measures of cognitive reactivity (e.g. Beevers et al. 2007; Fox et al. 2009), hormonal reactivity (e.g. Chen et al., 2009; Gotlib et al. 2008), physiological reactivity (e.g. Lonsdorf et al. 2009) and reactivity in the brain’s emotion-circuitry (e.g. Hariri et al. 2005; Canli et al. 2006). This vulnerability of 5-HTTLPR S carriers has also been confirmed in animal research (e.g., Carola et al. 2008; Barr et al. 2004; Kalin et al. 2008; Watson et ...