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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.

 

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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. "

 

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. " 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. 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. ___

Associated Press National Writer Allen G. Breed in Raleigh, N.C., contributed to

this report.

 

 

 

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