high IQ of Ashkenazi Jews + persecuted past - a link?

[theapportioner]

I guess I should've written more clearly - what I meant to say is that according to the hypothesis, Africans who were better able to retain salt - and thus water - had a better chance of surviving the journey across the Atlantic. I made a flippant comment about "saltier" Africans, and it didn't occur to me that the "salt" in this case could be misconstrued as sea salt. My bad.

[theapportioner]

It's a bit odd that so many people are so willing to denounce any and every theory that dares to propose a link between biology (usually but not always taken to mean genes) and race, or intelligence. I guess people are afraid of eugenics, slippery slopes and all that, but let's test the theories first.

[Helm]

Personally not afraid at all. Just that I don't think 'intelligence' as as easily quantifiable as is say, stamina or physical strength.

[Big Papa Goat]

Originally Posted by Abcdxxxx

I think I'm still missing the legtimacy of that sea salt theory. Slave trade Africans didn't spend entire generations on ships, to my knowledge. The idea that the only ones who had the genetics to survive such conditions can be relegated to one race, rather then the circumstances is a little suspect and fixated on race in it's own way. In order to use this theory to prove race doesn't exist, you still have to seperate the Black Africans somehow.... if not by race, then by some other reason. What reason? Time at sea exposed to salt air, with little nourishment, and brutal conditions? That aspect of the story isn't unique at all to history.

Wouldn't this mean the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock would have this exact gene? Who else traveled by boat? Maybe it's not the salt air after all...maybe it's a gene procurred through survivors of extreme conditions when shackles are involved? Ahh! Don't make me get out my Viking novels!

All's I'm saying is that it's a plausible explanation for a genetic tendency in african americans to retain salt, if such gene is indeed prevalent. It's really only incidentally a racial thing though, since the selection would have happened to African slaves, which may not have had a paticular prevalence of salty genes. And they wouldn't have needed to have spent several generations on the ships, since several generations of African Americans would have been descended directly from slaves who were on the slave ships. The slaves that came off the ships could plausibly have experienced very heavy selection pressures for certain genes. I'm not sure how many Africans died on the slave ships, but unless I'm mistaken, it was a very significant portion, and genes that facilitate survival on a sea journey would be selected for in an exaggerated way.
Let's say that 5 out of 100 slaves possessed some gene for saltiness or whatever else that would aid in survival on a long sea journey. And lets say that on the average trip, 30 out of 100 slaves died at sea, but only 1 of the slaves posessing that given gene. A situation like that would cause the prevalence of that gene in the population to go from 5/100 to 4/70. Let's say that on average, this kind of ratio of survival happens on all the slave ships over the 200 years or whatever of the slave trade. The entire population of Africans in America would have this 4/70 ratio for salty genes in this case, since all the Africans in that population would have experienced the same selection pressure, and they would be a largely isolated population (unless I'm mistaken) for at least several generations. I'm not saying that this is definitely what happened, all I'm saying is that it isn't entirely implausible. And again, it's only incidentally a 'racial' thing, since native Africans would have had the same salty gene frequency as any other population. All I'm really saying here is that it's plausible. As for the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock, it's certainly possible that they also experienced similar selection, perhaps if you looked into it you'd see slightly higher levels of salty genes in their population, or any other population of seaborn immigrants. The African situation would probably be exaggerated however, given the higher death rate on the journey.

[Abcdxxxx]

uh. well.

the greater point here is that it's incorrect to go around and claim there is no scientific proof of race existing at all, which has been a popular rebutal. what was an open and shut case to many people needs to be argued or at least discussed further. i do think people mix up their understanding of tribes, and races.

i still think it's troubling to discredit the possibility that blacks are distinct by using their time spent in shackles as a unifying trait. that's a bit sick really. Like I said, you're explaining away race by using a racial stereotype. Not all of black american was brought over in extreme conditions. All we know is that Blacks are susceptable of this disease, and nothing specific has proved that only ancestry of African slaves can acquire it. the rest is wishfull thinking.

[Sethomas]

The problem with that mode of thinking is that it defeats the purpose of statistics by purporting that anomaly rules. Not all blacks came in shackles, but exactly how many of them do you think flew over here in the Concorde in the twentieth century? You contradict yourself in that you accuse the use of race as a factor when you argue against a point that reflects specifically genetic bloodlines, not race. The difference is that the case of blacks in shackles would be no different than had whites or asians or whatever been brought over under the same conditions and for some reason retained homogeneous breeding. It's slightly different in that blacks (as a millennia-old bloodline, NOT a race) have adaptations against malaria that result in sickle-cell anemia, which could alter in some way their development in the New World.

[Big Papa Goat]

I don't really think that 'races' exist if that's what you're wondering abcdxxx. Nothing I said really had anything to do with that question anyway. If everyone on the slave ships were different 'races' or were taken from different populations (which they may well have been) and were subsequently reproductively isolated to a relatively large degree, the same kind of gene frequency changes would have occured.
Basically, what sethomas said.

[Abcdxxxx]

Originally Posted by Sethomas

You contradict yourself in that you accuse the use of race as a factor when you argue against a point that reflects specifically genetic bloodlines, not race.

When we reference slavery, we're speaking of "race", not genetic bloodlines. There is no genetic bloodline that evolved as a result of Slavery, just like there's no genetic bloodline that evolved from life in Auschwitz. What you're inadvertantly saying is that slavery created a race of people with genetic ties where they had never been previously. That's a little scary sounding coming from white bread America. Even so, if race is merely a construct that alters itself genetically based on experience, then at what point do we consider this constructed race a legitemate race? 500 years?

Anyway, I'm not qualified to argue genetic biology, and I'll be the first to admit it.... but I got trapped at a dinner party about a year ago with someone who was researching these race specific drugs for a trade publication, and I played devils advocate with her for a while.... contrary to what you're saying, there is a scientific field opening up of scientists who are exploring race specific medicine, specifically because they do not believe race is a construct. I'm not equipped to defend the merit of these studies, but when I did try and pose various questions about these genes developing as a result of persecution, climate, location, diet, lifestyle, etc. there were strong deductive reasonings for why these had been ruled out.

[Sethomas]

I'm not qualified to argue genetic biology

I noticed.

First of all, it seems like you have a backwards understanding of what we mean by "bloodlines" and "race". A bloodline simply refers to a population that for whatever reason has for the most part had isolated reproduction, id est, its members tend to breed only amongst themselves. A bloodline could be established within a few decades, or through what is known as a "genetic bottleneck", it could be established in a single generation.

In biological terms "race" refers to the level of genetic diversity among members of the same species who can all produce viable, fertile offspring with any of the others. There is a huge amount of diversity in human phenotypes, sure, but at the genetic level we're all almost exactly the same. When biologists took a serious look at race in comparison to all other organisms, it became quite apparent that humans are quite surprisingly homogeneous. Sure, a Bantu looks a hell of a lot different than an Inuit, but the difference is insignificant than say comparing an irish wolfhound to a chihuahua. Humans simply lack the genetic diversity of other organisms that leads to a cogent understanding of "race".

Bloodlines, however, do exist. Chemical underpinnings of human populations varies extremely from region to region. They also vary greatly by what common convention holds erroneously to be "race", such as from Black to Hebrew to Korean to Aryan. This can reflect regional evolutionary factors, such as malanin distribution or sickle-cells in blacks, or increased lung capacity in the Inca, or short body stature in the Inuits, et cetera blah blah. At dinner tonight my sister was talking about how when she was studying the liver in med school, she was tought that Asians produce a certain enzyme in lesser quantities than the world norm and consequently have a lower alcohol threshold. I don't see any immediate evolutionary benefit to that, but hey, it seems to be true.

So you can't ask how long it takes for a "race" to be established, because humans have only been around for 100,000 or so years, and have only moved out of Africa for about the past 40 millennia. There is no genetic race because we genetic bloodlines have had neither the time nor the impetus to diversify away from the norm. For example, there's a common belief that the more chromosomes a species has, the more "evolved" it is. Humans have only a few dozen, coming from mammals who evolved less than 100 million years ago. Ferns, I believe, have several hundred chromosomes, reflecting the fact that they have been around since probably before the Triassic.

So, yeah. No race, just bloodlines.

[Abcdxxxx]

Or in colloquial terms : race.

[theapportioner]

Here's an article about the debate on BiDil, and race-based pharm generally.

http://www.nyu.edu/nyutoday/archives...ty-debate.html

[ziggytrix]

The point: “Race is an approximation,” Greene says. “The eventual goal is to have individually designed drugs.”

[theapportioner]

Even so, that's a significant concession from "race is genetically irrelevant" - in certain cases it is clinically relevant, w.r.t. tendencies for certain diseases and pharmacological responsiveness, and so on.

[ziggytrix]

Originally Posted by theapportioner

Even so, that's a significant concession from "race is genetically irrelevant"

Well, that's just a semantics arguement anyway. We're bickering over misuse of the words race, species, bloodline, whatnot. I'm sure whatever genetic sequence that makes certain blacks prone to sickle-cell actually has nothing to do with the sequence that makes them dark-skinned.

What I'm driving at, is that when they make a black man's drug, it's not actually going to target people with dark skin, but rather people predisposed to sickle cell anemia, or some such genetic condition.

[theapportioner]

You're not appreciating the realities of how medicine is practiced. A patient comes in to the doctor's office for the first time, complaining of whatever, and the doctor only has 15 minutes to devote to an interview. You may have to take into account the person's race, along with all other details of the patient's history, in order to prescribe the right drug, at the right dosages. In effect, the doctor has stereotype the patient along the lines of race.

[ziggytrix]

Perhaps, but even the specific drug mentioned in your article was tailored to 'nitric-oxide deficiency' not 'blackness.' I'm curious just how much more prevalent this nitric-oxide deficiency is in black heart-failure patients.

What researchers are looking for in such studies are certain genes that tend to mutate more than others. Some of these so-called polymorphisms -- such as the one related to prostate cancer risk in Tobagoan men -- arguably have an effect on health and how people respond to medications.

But Graves said biomedical researchers need to take greater care in analyzing this data. In his book, he questions whether the prostate cancer polymorphism is truly the indicator that some researchers have suggested. That particular polymorphism can vary in length -- men with long versions are thought to be at increased risk for the cancer. The definition of long and short is arbitrary. Depending on what cutoff is used, he said, the frequency of the long form isn't necessarily much greater in black Americans than it is in whites.

On the other hand, Graves is persuaded that differences in the frequency of another mutation -- the CCR5 gene -- might help explain why there are more people of European as compared to African descent who are resistant to the AIDS virus.

The CCR5 mutation increases the resistance to infection by the human immunodeficiency virus and is much more common in people of European descent.

At the same time, non-genetic factors -- principally the lack of male circumcision and an associated greater prevalence of chanchroid sores -- play important roles in the spread of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, he added.

Differences in the frequencies of certain polymorphisms also can affect how people respond to medications, said Dr. Bruce Pollock, chief of geriatrics and neuropsychiatry in the Pitt psychiatry department.

For instance, African Americans seem to have a higher frequency of one mutation that reduces the liver's ability to break down certain tricyclic antidepressant drugs, so they are more likely than their white counterparts to suffer side effects. Blacks also have a higher frequency of a mutation that increases the speed at which a newer class of antidepressants, such as Prozac, take effect.

But none of these mutations are specific to one race and it is only their frequency that varies, Pollock emphasized.

"Nobody would make clinical decisions based on a racial profile," he said. "Race is a very crude predictor of any sort of differential response to medication."

About 8 percent of whites carry a mutation that would cause trouble with warfarin, a blood-thinning drug, compared to 2 or 3 percent of blacks. It's a difference that might be noticeable across populations, but isn't of much use in treating an individual. "I don't think you'd be less vigilant [for side effects] in this case," he added.

Last year, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study showing that African Americans with heart failure were less likely than whites to benefit from a type of drug known as an ACE inhibitor.

And a Massachusetts company has developed a drug called BiDil -- actually a combination of existing medications -- which it says is designed specifically for black heart patients.

But Dr. Alastair J.J. Wood, a pharmacologist at Vanderbilt University, said the variation between members of a race makes it impossible to use race as the basis for tailoring drug therapies.

"If Chinese people were, on average, smaller than Caucasians, that doesn't help you in selecting a shirt size for a Chinese man," he observed.

http://www.post-gazette.com/healthsc...gene0507p3.asp