Official development blog for the PARANOIA roleplaying game. No description is available at your security clearance. The Computer is your friend.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Hot Fun is on the way! 

From NewScientist.com, "The food you eat may change your genes for life" by Alison Motluk:

It sounds like science fiction: simply swallowing a pill, or eating a specific food supplement, could permanently change your behaviour for the better, or reverse diseases such as schizophrenia, Huntington's or cancer.

Yet such treatments are looking increasingly plausible. In the latest development, normal rats have been made to behave differently just by injecting them with a specific amino acid. The change to their behaviour was permanent. The amino acid altered the way the rat's genes were expressed, raising the idea that drugs or dietary supplements might permanently halt the genetic effects that predispose people to mental or physical illness.

It is not yet clear whether such interventions could work in humans. But there is good reason to believe they could, as evidence mounts that a range of simple nutrients might have such effects. [...]

Though the experiment impaired well-adjusted animals, the opposite should be possible, and Szyf has already shown that a chemical called TSA that is designed to strip away methyl groups can turn a badly raised rat into a more normal one. [...T]echniques such as "RNA-directed DNA methylation", so far tested only in plants but theoretically possible in mammals, may allow us to target such methylation much more precisely.
Posted by: Allen Varney / 11:42 AM

Comments:
Fortunately it's not as easy as it seems. Szyf and colleagues injected the amino acid directly into the brain, probably into an small area that regulates behavior and in a higher concentration that can normally be found there. I haven't seen the full scientific paper yet, so I can't be sure. The rat brain and the human brain show quite some similarities, so presumably it could work in humans too. The gap between this clinical experiment and using food supplements to the same effect, however, is huge.

That said, the discussion about what determines behavior and how to affect it by therapy, drugs, and now genetic modification is a very good source of inspiration for PARANOIA. Especially if you consider how such things can go wrong in a game... ;-).

Behavioral conditioning is a good trick to use on your players too, if you mostly play with the same people. For example, always use Briefing Room Number 3. Have the goons shout at them if they still don't know they should use Briefing Room Number 3 after a couple of games. Continue until they go there on autopilot, too busy with other issues to pay any attention to it. Then have them blunder in on a VIOLETs' meeting there (or a secsoc conspiracy, or something). The shocking experience will be bigger -and more rewarding- than without the conditioning.
# posted by Anonymous CPUreaucrat : November 18, 2005 9:24 AM
 
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