Fish suffer from insomnia caused by a genetic mutation.

That’s what scientists at Stanford University School of Medicine reported this week about zebrafish — a common aquarium fish.

I was interested in the story because I have sleep problems. I had them even as a child. I grew up with six siblings and a shortage of bedrooms, so my younger brother and I shared a bed growing up. I told my mother my younger brother kept me awake grinding his teeth and talking in his sleep.

But he was not to blame. It was my bad gene.

I still wake up two to four times a night. I’m usually awake an hour or two.

I walk, read, write, work crossword puzzles, stare out a window. Then I lie down, wait for sleep and think about things.

Last Sunday, I called my younger brother, who lives in Denver and whose son attends the University of Colorado. I avoided calling him for three weeks because the Colorado Buffaloes upset then No. 3 Oklahoma Sooners on Sept. 29.

I figured enough time passed so he wouldn’t say first thing, “How about those Buffaloes?”

But now I’m awake at night thinking I’m not calling him for a month or more because the Colorado Rockies, who were underdogs, won the National League Championship Series.

Upsets happen. That’s life. They don’t keep you awake nights. Bad genes do.

Prescription drug ads attribute insomnia to stress. I won’t take sleep aids. Everybody experiences stress — we grow up sure our parents don’t understand us, we struggle for a place in the world, and we have children. We face lots of stress.

Stress doesn’t explain insomnia. But scientists have an answer — mutant sleep genes. Even fish have them. The gene wakes you. Your mind takes over.

I’m not sure what a fish ponders. I suppose living in a murky world stimulates speculative meditation.

Fish, especially small fish such as the zebrafish, must wonder whether the next day some big, bad predator will grab his little tail fin. And he must wonder what happened to his buddy who suddenly disappeared. One day they swam together and this line or net appeared, and zip, his buddy was gone.

Something like that happens to humans. It happened to Maher Arar.

Arar, 37, a Canadian engineer, was at Kennedy Airport in 2002 when our government whisked him away to Syria, where he was put in prison for more than 10 months and tortured. Canada mistakenly put him on a terrorist list, and the U.S. government practices extraordinary rendition, which means our government picks up suspected terrorists, and who knows who else, and takes them some place for questioning — and torturing. No court needed.

Some authors after World War II wrote books envisioning this kind of thing spreading to the “free world” from the Soviet Union and other dictatorships that practiced it. When I was growing up and awake at night because of the mutant gene, I wondered if they could be right.

They were. We know partly because of the mistake with Arar.

Thursday, U.S. House members apologized to the Canadian. Canada already paid Arar a $10 million apology.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., said he was sorry, but that he doesn’t support ending extraordinary rendition. He claims it protects millions of Americans: “We are at war. Mistakes happen. People die.”

So some innocent people get picked up and tortured by mistake, and five years later we apologize.

Rendition mistakes are like upsets in sports. It happens.

I heard a story this week about a poor Dominican who dropped a banana peel into the street during the reign of the dictator Trujillo. Police took not only the man who dropped the peel but the three people nearest to him to prison.

Those crazy mistakes happen.

But you don’t sleep at night because you think those things might happen to you.

It’s the bad gene that does it.

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