Charges initiated against Pope for crimes against humanity, PTSD-trauma link

also: Twin study may quiet doubts over PTSD-trauma link

Charges initiated against Pope for crimes against humanity
TWO GERMAN lawyers have initiated charges against Pope Benedict XVI at the International Criminal Court, alleging crimes against humanity. PATSY McGARRY, Religious Affairs Correspondent The Irish Times - February 23, 2011

TWO GERMAN lawyers have initiated charges against Pope Benedict XVI at the International Criminal Court, alleging crimes against humanity. Christian Sailer and Gert-Joachim Hetzel, based at Marktheidenfeld in the Pope’s home state of Bavaria, last week submitted a 16,500-word document to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at the Hague, Dr Luis Moreno Ocampo.

Their charges concern “three worldwide crimes which until now have not been denounced . . . (as) the traditional reverence toward ‘ecclesiastical authority’ has clouded the sense of right and wrong”.

They claim the Pope “is responsible for the preservation and leadership of a worldwide totalitarian regime of coercion which subjugates its members with terrifying and health-endangering threats”. They allege he is also responsible for “the adherence to a fatal forbiddance of the use of condoms, even when the danger of HIV-Aids infection exists” and for “the establishment and maintenance of a worldwide system of cover-up of the sexual crimes committed by Catholic priests and their preferential treatment, which aids and abets ever new crimes”. http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/0223/1224290630240.html

Criminal Charges against Dr. Joseph Ratzinger, Pope of the Roman Catholic Church on grounds of Crimes against Humanity According to Art. 7 ICC Statute
http://www.kanzlei-sailer.de/pope-lawsuit-2011.pdf

Twin study may quiet doubts over PTSD-trauma link
By Lynne Peeples NEW YORK Sep 30, 2010 NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Trauma really is the trigger of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, suggests a new study that could help settle an ongoing debate.
"It's been argued by some that PTSD is not a bona fide disorder, that these people are just maladjusted and the trauma doesn't have anything to with it," senior researcher Dr. Roger Pitman of Boston's Harvard University told Reuters Health....

Pitman and colleagues from Harvard and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs looked to 103 pairs of identical male twins from the Vietnam Era Twin Registry to test whether trauma truly causes PTSD, or if its sufferers would have developed symptoms of the disorder regardless. One brother from each pair had been exposed to combat in the Vietnam War; the other had not. Fifty of the combat-exposed men had PTSD.

The researchers found a substantial difference in mental disorders between the twins: Men exposed to combat and diagnosed with PTSD had three-fold more symptoms than their brothers, as well as compared to the combat veterans without PTSD and their co-twins. Similar patterns appeared when considering only PTSD-related psychiatric symptoms, report the researchers in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. According to Pitman, "If you assume that the identical twin is a representation of what the veteran would have been like had he not been exposed to combat, with the same genes and same family upbringing, then the conclusion is that psychiatric trauma causes substantial psychiatric symptoms in a portion of the population."

Given the similarities in symptoms between co-twins of combat-exposed brothers that did and did not develop PTSD, the findings also refute the presence of any predisposing genetic or environmental traits that increase vulnerability to trauma-induced PTSD, the authors say.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/09/30/us-twin-ptsd-idUSTRE68T47B20100930

Is Trauma a Causal Agent of Psychopathologic Symptoms in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder? Findings From Identical Twins Discordant for Combat Exposure

Mark W. Gilbertson, PhD; Alexander C. McFarlane, MD; Frank W. Weathers, PhD; Terence M. Keane, PhD; Rachel Yehuda, PhD; Arieh Y. Shalev, MD; Natasha B. Lasko, PhD; Jared M. Goetz, BA; and Roger K. Pitman, MD, for the Harvard/VA PTSD Twin Study Investigators
J Clin Psychiatry 2010;71(10):1324–1330
10.4088/JCP.10m06121blu

....Method: A case-control twin study conducted between 1996–2001 examined psychopathologic symptoms in a national convenience sample of 104 identical twin pairs discordant for combat exposure in Vietnam, with (n = 50) or without (n = 54) combat-related PTSD (DSM-IV–diagnosed) in the exposed twin....

Results: Combat veterans with PTSD demonstrated significantly higher scores (P < .0001) on the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised and other psychometric measures of psychopathology than their own combat-unexposed cotwins (and than combat veterans without PTSD and their cotwins).
Conclusions: These results support the conclusion that the majority of psychiatric symptoms reported by combat veterans with PTSD would not have been present were it not for their exposure to traumatic events.
http://article.psychiatrist.com/dao_1-login.asp?ID=10007050&RSID=75635130271135

Study on twins may quiet doubts on PTSD-trauma link
Researchers found major difference in mental disorders in twins if one had seen combat
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39441551/ns/health-mental_health/