Overview

Abstract

Throughout this book an emphasis has been laid on the biometrical genetical approach to the problems of unravelling the various determinants of individual differences in drug response. This bias, if such it be, will have been evident to the reader who was, indeed, warned of it at the outset (see Chapter 1). No apology therefore seems to be called for for this emphasis. On the contrary, it has provided the writer with a vantage point from which to view the contemporary literature with a consistency of approach hitherto not a conspicuous feature of the analysis of the dependence of drug effects on genetic background. But the applications of the principles underlying this approach have been dealt with piecemeal as they have arisen so that the importance of those principles themselves may have been obscured by the details of the contexts in which they have appeared. It seems desirable, therefore, to review them, in a series of summary and hence somewhat didactic statements (Broadhurst and Jinks, 1977) before proceeding briefly to assess, in each case, the extent to which the material reviewed in this book illustrates them. It will be seen that most of the programmatic points to be developed have been referred to earlier, though not necessarily in the order given. Sometimes, indeed, they go beyond the review, usually because relevant examples have not been encountered in the psychopharmacological literature. In other cases the examples which could be adduced do not especially illuminate the extent to which the biometrical approach can be utilized in their analysis. Often experiments were not planned in such a way as to render them potentially amenable to appropriate analysis of this kind. In other cases, while the data appear satisfactory, the analysis brought to bear on them is less powerful than biometrical methods allow.