Chris

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/139938.php

In Canada scientists did research about people who commited suicide. They wanted to know if being abused as a child created a change in DNA expression. In people that had a history of abuse they had a different gene expression that effected the way they handled stress. This experiment was the work of scientists from the Douglas Mental Health University Institute and McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and the Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences. Previous studies showed that people that have a history of abuse had a diiferent stress response and had an increase for suicide. For the study the researchers used samples from 36 brains: 12 came from suicide victims who had been abused as children, 12 came from suicide victims who had no such history, and 12 came from people who had died of other causes (the controls). The researchers found that the child abuse victims had different "epigenetic" markings in a part of the brain that influences the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) function, a stress-response that increases suicide risk.

I think that this was a good experiment because it could help people that could be thinking of commiting suicide and have a history of abuse. This could also make parents become more aware of the dangers of abuse and they could look out for their children more. I think that abuse has a major effect on children and now people could know the dangers of doing it. Also children could be more aware and not accept abuse and speak up if there is something wrong