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Hatfield-McCoy feud blamed on 'rage' disease

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Hatfield-McCoy feud blamed on ‘rage’ disease
Rare, genetic condition may have fueled violent tempers across
generations
Updated: 4:49 p.m. ET April 5, 2007 {AP}
The most infamous feud in American folklore, the long-running battle
between the Hatfields and McCoys, may be partly explained by a rare,
inherited disease that can lead to hair-trigger rage and violent
outbursts.
Dozens of McCoy descendants apparently have the disease, which causes
high blood pressure, racing hearts, severe headaches and too much
adrenaline and other “fight or flight” stress hormones.

No one blames the whole feud on this, but doctors say it could help
explain some of the clan’s notorious behavior.
“This condition can certainly make anybody short-tempered, and if they
are prone because of their personality, it can add fuel to the fire,”
said Dr. Revi Mathew, a Vanderbilt University endocrinologist treating
one of the family members.
The Hatfields and McCoys have a storied and deadly history dating to
Civil War times. Their generations of fighting over land, timber rights
and even a pig are the subject of dozens of books, songs and countless
jokes. Unfortunately for Appalachia, the feud is one of its greatest
sources of fame.
Several genetic experts have known about the disease plaguing some of
the McCoys for decades, but kept it secret. The Associated Press learned
of it after several family members revealed their history to Vanderbilt
doctors, who are trying to find more McCoy relatives to warn them of the
risk.
One doctor who had researched the family for decades called them the
“McC kindred” in a 1998 medical journal article tracing the disease
through four generations.
“He said something about us never being able to get insurance” if the
full family name was used, said Rita Reynolds, a Bristol, Tenn., woman
with the disease. She says she is a McCoy descendant and has documents
from the doctor showing his work on her family.
She is speaking up now so distant relatives might realize their risk and
get help before the condition proves fatal, as it did to many of her
ancestors.
Back then, “we didn’t even know this existed,” she said. “They just up
and died.”
Angry tumors and tempers
Von Hippel-Lindau disease, which afflicts many family members, can cause
tumors in the eyes, ears, pancreas, kidney, brain and spine. Roughly
three-fourths of the affected McCoys have pheochromocytomas — tumors of
the adrenal gland.
The small, bubbly-looking orange adrenal gland sits atop each kidney and
makes adrenaline and substances called catecholamines. Too much can
cause high blood pressure, pounding headaches, heart palpitations,
facial flushing, nausea and vomiting.

There is no cure for the disease,
but removing the tumors before they turn cancerous can improve survival.
Affected family members have long been known to be combative, even with
their kin. Reynolds recalled her grandfather, “Smallwood” McCoy.
“When he would come to visit, everyone would run and hide. They acted
like they were scared to death of him. He had a really bad temper,” she
said.
Her adopted daughter, another McCoy descendant, 11-year-old Winnter
Reynolds, just had an adrenal tumor removed at Vanderbilt Children’s
Hospital. Teachers thought the girl had ADHD — attention deficit
hyperactivity disorder. Now, Winnter says, “my parents are thinking it
may be the tumor” that caused the behavior. “I’ve been feeling great
since they took it out.”
Her adoptive father, James Reynolds, said of the McCoys: “It don’t take
much to set them off. They’ve got a pretty good temper.
“Before the surgery, Winnter, when we would discipline her, she’d
squeeze her fists together and get real angry and start hollering back
at us, screaming and crying,” he said.
As for the older McCoys, “they just started dropping dead of the
tumors,” he said. “They didn’t know what it was. A name wasn’t really
put on the disease until 1968. That’s when one of my brothers-in-law had
to have surgery, to have some tumors removed in his brain. They started
to notice tumors occurring in each of the family members.”
Dr. Nuzhet Atuk at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and
geneticists at the University of Pennsylvania studied the family for
more than 30 years, Rita Reynolds said.
'Madness disease'
“They went back on the genealogy and all of that stuff,” she said. “They
called it madness disease. They said that it had to be coming from the
VHL. Our family would just go off, even on the doctors.”
Now 85 and retired, Atuk said he could not talk about his work because
of medical confidentiality.
Rita Reynolds had two adrenal tumors removed a few years ago. Her mother
and three brothers also had them. So do McCoy descendants in Oregon,
Michigan and Indiana, she said.
“When you have these tumors, you’re easy to get upset,” said Rita’s
mother, Goldie Hankins, 76, of Big Rock, Va., near the Kentucky-West
Virginia border. “When people get on your nerves, you just can’t take
it. You get angry because your blood pressure was so high.”
Still, many are dubious that this condition had much of a role in the
bitter feud with the Hatfields, which played out in the hill country of
eastern Kentucky and West Virginia for decades.
Some say the feud dates to Civil War days, when some members of the
families took opposite sides. It grew into disputes over timber rights
and land in the 1870s, and gained more notoriety in 1878, when Randolph
or “Old Randal” McCoy accused a Hatfield of stealing one of his pigs.
The hostilities left at least a dozen dead.
“The McCoy temperament is legendary. Whether or not we can blame it on
genes, I don’t know,” said Ron McCoy, 43, of Durham, N.C., one of the
organizers of the annual Hatfield-McCoy reunion. “There are a lot of
underpinnings that are probably a more legitimate source of conflict.”
“There was a lot of inter-marrying” that could have played havoc with
the gene pool, he conceded.
Another relative, Bo McCoy, of Waverly, Ohio, said he had never heard
talk of the disease although he has been diagnosed with a different
adrenal gland problem — Cushing’s syndrome.
'Truce' signed in 2003
Even Reo Hatfield, who drafted the “truce” the two families famously
signed in 2003 to officially end hostilities, doubted the role of the
McCoys’ disease in the feud.
“I would be shocked” if doctors blamed it on illness, he said.
Altina Waller, a professor of history at the University of Connecticut
and author of a book about the feud, agreed.
“Medical folks like to find these kinds of explanations. Like the Salem
witchcraft thing. That book came out about how that was caused by wheat
that was grown that had this parasite or mold or fungus or something
that caused everybody in Salem to go nuts,” she said.
“How does it explain the other dozen or so feuds that I’ve looked at in
other places?” she asked, citing disputes over coal and other issues.
“The rage and violence as such was not confined to McCoys.”
She acknowledges that an argument could be made for seeing the McCoys as
the more aggressive of the clans.
“One of the reasons the McCoys don’t like me as much in the Tug Valley
as the Hatfields do is that I seem to suggest that Randal McCoy, the
patriarch of the family, was sort of irrational and flamboyant and did
jump to, into wanting violence more than, say, Anderson Hatfield,”
Waller said.
These days, the “feud” has taken a far more civil tone and all but
disappeared, members of both families say. The last time it surfaced was
in January 2003. McCoy descendants sued Hatfield descendants over
visitation rights to a small cemetery on an Appalachian hillside in
eastern Kentucky. It holds the remains of six McCoys, some allegedly
killed by the Hatfields.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17967965/wid/11915773?GT1=9303

Hatfield-McCoy feud blamed on ‘rage’ disease
Rare, genetic condition may have fueled violent tempers across
generations

Updated: 4:49 p.m. ET April 5, 2007 {AP}

The most infamous feud in American folklore, the long-running battle
between the Hatfields and McCoys, may be partly explained by a rare,
inherited disease that can lead to hair-trigger rage and violent
outbursts.