Congenital Origin Of Mental Diseases

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29972, 6 November 1962, Page 15

Congenital Origin Of Mental Diseases

(.V.Z. Press Association—Copyrioht)

NEW YORK, November 4.

Many mental diseases could ;be cured and the birth of j children with gross mental defects prevented if scientists concentrated more on j their congenital origin. Dr. Linus Pauling said tonight i Dr. Pauling, an American winner of the Nobel Prize I for chemistry, said that in his research be became con- ! vinced that mental diseases "for the most part" stemmed 1 from congenital molecular I abnormalities. I Addressing a Medical Foundation dinner in New York, ihe said: “I believe that most lof the patients with mental : disease who occuply half the i hospital beds in the United ' States, have inherited mutated genes that manufacture abnormal protein molecules, in place of the normal ones ! needed for good mental health, or which act in some I other way to change the ! molecular structure of the I human body.” I Dr. Pauling said only two molecular mental diseases phenylketonuria and i 1 galactosemia were well

understood by scientists and could be treated by rigid diet control, and by implanting stable artificial enzymes ‘‘But there are without doubt hundreds of molecular diseases with serious mental manifestations. "If an intensive attacktens. hundreds of millions of dollars a year—were to be made by scientists on the great problem of mental disease, I am confident that many important discoveries would be made during the next 20 years. . . ." He said the passing on of mental diseases from parents to their children could also be controlled by new drugs to remedy the chemical imbalance of body fluids responsible for mental illness . . . after the nature of the chemical imbalance had been discovered.