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To: SeekAndFind

“See, only black people die from Ebola, Ebola is racist!”


19 posted on 10/24/2014 8:29:26 AM PDT by dfwgator (The "Fire Muschamp" tagline is back!)
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To: dfwgator

The Spanish missionaries died of Ebola (as have, I think, 9 Doctors Without Frontiers workers) but I wonder if perhaps West Africans are more badly affected.

It’s not (quite) as nuts as it sounds: Africans have several adaptations to give them relative immunity to Malaria. For example, >90% of West Africans are Duffy Antigen negative - FY(a-b-). This makes them largely Malaria resistant.

The downside of being Duffy negative is that West Africans are more susceptible to some inflammatory ailments, also to prostate cancer and HIV.

Only 3% of Caucasians and <1% of Asians are FY(a-b-). I believe the figure is around 68% for African-Americans. (This is why US blood banks are always in need of black donors - Duffy negative recipients can have a mild reaction to the antigen in Duffy positive blood.)

Anyhow, I’m not a biologist and this is just ignorant speculation on my part. I’d like to think that the CDC is exploring every angle, but on current showing, I’m afraid political correctness might get in the way of serious investigation.


81 posted on 10/25/2014 5:58:09 PM PDT by Vide
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