Violent behavior and the brain - Do we know everything? The DMZ, which runs through central Vietnam, is a place where uncontested violence was unleashed for more than a decade in the late 1960s and early 1970s. During the year I worked in Vietnam, I often returned to this spot to look at the American veterans, who stood atop Marble Mountain, withered, empty eyes turned toward this stretch of beach known only to Americans under the name of China. It was mystifying to consider the stark contrast that must have seemed all too obvious to them as the sounds of war surged into their memories and the calm ocean stretched out before them now so serenely. It was then that I first began to think about what causes man. becoming so enraged that he commits mental, bodily and spiritual atrocities. Violence, plain and simple, is intrinsic to humanity. It goes almost unnoticed as a way of life in many communities. Drive through North Philadelphia on a spring afternoon and witness what seems like life disappearing, receding beneath the concrete and graffiti. Take a closer look and see the bullet holes in the walls of houses and cars. However, there are other communities, such as North Brooklyn, where the crime rate has been decreasing for twenty-five years. It actually seems that violent crimes don't behave as expected. Social scientists have begun to suggest that, in fact, violent crime should be considered an infectious disease. Simultaneously, neurobiologists have developed complex models and research techniques to examine whether or not there are biological triggers that cause individuals to act violently. What if violence was truly seen as an epidemic – with both neurological and sociological explanations? As a public health practitioner and activist, I tend to champion the cause of social scientists and the role that society, economics, and politics play in making a violent individual. What is the environment that allows an epidemic of violence to take over a community and how does it begin within the individual? Epidemiologists consider that an epidemic reaches its “tipping point” when it transforms into a public health crisis. As Malcolm Gladwell notes in his article “The Tipping Point,” “Every epidemic has its tipping point, and to fight an epidemic you have to understand what that tipping point is.” What then is the tipping point for an individual motivated to act violently? ??