By Werner Bartens
This is a classic in the series “Old jokes in a new guise”. Researchers have discovered the genetic cause of computer addiction: it is the Zum-PC gene. Such jokes are in no way intended to trivialize the phenomenon of addiction; Rather, they arise from pure self-defense. How else should one react to a study in which a complex behavior such as a tendency to play computer games is reduced to a few genetic traits, as urologists and health scientists from Shanghai do in the journal Andrology? But that’s not all – the researchers believe that they have also identified a “positive association” in the genes between the amount of sedentary leisure activity in front of the PC and the risk of erectile dysfunction. The same genes may lead to daddling as to impotence!