Posted on 07/29/2003 8:10:06 AM PDT by new cruelty
WASHINGTON - It began as a penchant for pornography. Soon he was scouring the Internet for provocative photos of children. Then he asked his prepubescent stepdaughter for sexual favours, was diagnosed with pedophilia and convicted of child molestation.
The night before his sentencing, a 40-year-old man turned up in an emergency room in Charlottesville, Va., with a headache, saying he feared he might rape his landlady and kill himself.
Dr. Russell Swerdlow, a neurologist, quickly suspected the man's problems went well beyond pedophilia and the stress of his impending incarceration.
An MRI revealed a tumour the size of a golf ball pushing against his brain.
When surgeons removed it, the man's lewd behaviour and urges for sexual contact with children disappeared.
The medical team cannot definitively explain why, but Dr. Swerdlow suspects the tumour was pressing on a part of the brain that governs behaviour and judgment.
The tumour was squeezing the frontal lobe above the man's eyes, a highly evolved area that scientists believe is responsible for controlling a person's impulses.
The changes in the man's behaviour are similar to those experienced by Phineas Gage, one of the most famous examples of frontal-lobe damage.
In 1848, an explosion drove a metal rod through the railway worker's left cheek, through his brain and out the top of his head.
His wounds healed in 10 weeks, but he was transformed from a shrewd businessman into a capricious, impatient man who could not control his anger.
The Virginia case, which was recently published in the medical journal Archives of Neurology, raises questions about how tumours affect brain function and, in turn, influence a person's behaviour and judgment.
Dr. Swerdlow, an associate professor of neurology with the University of Virginia Health System, said it suggests some people have more control over staying out of trouble than others.
"Free will, to some extent, is probably hard wired and, in that sense, isn't free will at all," he said.
And if that is true, he asked, can the criminal justice system hold everyone equally responsible for their actions?
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled executing mentally retarded murderers is unconstitutionally cruel because of their diminished ability to reason and control their urges.
Chris Adams, a death penalty specialist for the National Association of Criminal Defence Lawyers, suggests offenders with brain tumours that affect their behaviour fall in the same category.
"Some people simply don't have the frontal lobe capacity to stop what they're doing," he said.
Ralph Steinberg, president of the Criminal Lawyers' Association in Ontario, agrees.
"It does make one wonder that as medical science advances, how many other kinds of conduct are the result of factors beyond the exercise of an individual's free will," he said.
The patient, a highly educated teacher and former corrections officer, had all kinds of theories about his condition.
According to the Archives report, he understood his conduct was unacceptable, but continued to act on his sexual impulses anyway.
"The pleasure principle overrode" everything else, he said.
During his testing, he hit on a female resident and did not seem concerned after he urinated on himself.
After the surgery, he successfully participated in a Sexaholics Anonymous program.
He went home about seven months later, after authorities deemed he did not pose a threat to his stepdaughter.
But the headache returned, and the man began collecting pornography again.
Another MRI showed the tumour was growing back.
The doctors operated again and, just as before, his urges faded away.
Dr. Warren Mason, a specialist in brain tumours at the University of Toronto and Princess Margaret Hospital, said the man's behaviour was extremely rare for someone with a brain tumour.
Most people become apathetic or depressed and lose interest in their hygiene, he said.
"In 1848, an explosion drove a metal rod through the railway worker's left cheek, through his brain and out the top of his head.
His wounds healed in 10 weeks, but he was transformed from a shrewd businessman into a capricious, impatient man who could not control his anger. "
Metal rods in the head tend to have that effect.
"It wasn't meeee... it was my Frontal Lobe!"
All of the illegal immigration advocates on Capitol Hill should be given an MRI. Make that all Liberals.
Hillary's and Bill's brain tumors will probably set some kind of record. ;^)
I was suspecting the same thing. From the article:
The night before his sentencing, a 40-year-old man turned up in an emergency room in Charlottesville, Va., with a headache, saying he feared he might rape his landlady and kill himself.
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