Nightmare experience for man whose cancer turned him into a pedophile
December 31 2002
A brain tumour that was found to have triggered sexual aberration has made
medical history.
New York: A brain tumour turned a 40-year-old schoolteacher into an
uncontrollable sex addict and pedophile, a meeting of experts has been told.
When the tumour was removed, the man's obsession disappeared. But by then
the teacher had been evicted from his house and found guilty of child
molestation.
Russell Swerdlow and Jeffrey Burns, neurologists at the University of
Virginia, believe it is the first reported case linking brain cancer with
pedophilia.
They told the annual meeting of the American Neurological Association in
New York that the tumour was in a brain region that did not affect physical
health.
Dr Swerdlow said: "We're dealing with the neurology of morality here. It's
one of those areas where you could have a lot of damage and a doctor would
never suspect something's wrong."
The teacher had secretly started visiting child pornography websites and
soliciting prostitutes, activities he had never engaged in before.
Dr Swerdlow said that while the man felt his new behaviour was
unacceptable, in his words, the "pleasure principle overrode his restraint".
When the man's wife discovered he had been making subtle sexual advances
towards young children, he was legally evicted from his house and found
guilty of child molestation.
A judge ruled he had to pass a 12-step Sexaholics Anonymous rehabilitation
course or face going to jail. But the man was expelled from the program
after asking women on the course for sex, the meeting heard.
The evening before he was due to receive a prison sentence he took himself
to a hospital. He said he was suffering headaches and feared he would rape
his landlady.
After being remanded to psychiatric care, he complained of balance
problems, and a MRI brain scan revealed an egg-sized tumour. Seven months
after the tumour was removed, and having completed the Sexaholics Anonymous
course, the man returned home and resumed a normal life.
In October last year the headaches returned and he started collecting
pornography again. Another scan showed that the tumour had regrown, but
again its removal caused the man's sex-obsessed behaviour to disappear.
Dr Burns said: "He wasn't faking, but if someone argues that every
pedophile needs an MRI, the difference in this case was that the patient
had a normal history before he acquired the problem."
David Rosenfield, a behavioural neurologist at Baylor College of Medicine
in Houston, Texas, said more research was needed on whether other problems
with the orbifrontal cortex region of the brain might be linked to pedophilia.
The case was reported by New Scientist magazine's online news service.