Alcoholism: Is It Hereditary?

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through genetically oriented research and has dangerous
consequences for prevention and treatment policies. A tremendous amount of
attention and research has recently been concentrated on the inheritance
of alcoholism and on the possibility of accounting genetically for drunken
behavior. The major purpose for this research was the adoption studies
conducted in Scandinavia in the 1970�s which found reliable genetic, but
not adoptive transmission of alcoholism. This contemporary research
focuses on the offspring of alcoholics and on the biochemical or
neurological abnormalities they inherit that may lead to pathological
drinking. Or, alternatively, investigations may focus on a configuration
of personality traits centering on impulsiveness and antisocial activity
that can climax in alcoholism or other psychopathology. In the words of
one popular article on the topic, �A decade ago such a theory of inherited
antisocial personality and alcoholism would have been dismissed out ...

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from that presented by the
19th-century temperance movement. In that earlier era,
alcoholism was viewed as a danger inherent in the consumption of alcohol�
one that could befall any routine problem. This view, which in itself was
a matter of hot dispute among different ethnic, religious and social
groups and carried a good deal of moral baggage (Gusfield, 1963) was
finally discarded when national Prohibition failed and with it the idea
that the United States could reasonably hope to prevent all its citizens
from drinking.

The modern definition of alcoholism, as embodied by A.A., instead
claimed that the alcoholic was a person who from birth was destined to be
unable to control ...

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