Posted on 11/10/2007 5:41:43 PM PST by neverdem
When scientists first decoded the human genome in 2000, they were quick to portray it as proof of humankind’s remarkable similarity. The DNA of any two people, they emphasized, is at least 99 percent identical.
But new research is exploring the remaining fraction to explain differences between people of different continental origins.
Scientists, for instance, have recently identified small changes in DNA that account for the pale skin of Europeans, the tendency of Asians to sweat less and West Africans’ resistance to certain diseases.
At the same time, genetic information is slipping out of the laboratory and into everyday life, carrying with it the inescapable message that people of different races have different DNA. Ancestry tests tell customers what percentage of their genes are from Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas. The heart-disease drug BiDil is marketed exclusively to African-Americans, who seem genetically predisposed to respond to it. Jews are offered prenatal tests for genetic disorders rarely found in other ethnic groups.
Such developments are providing some of the first tangible benefits of the genetic revolution. Yet some social critics fear they may also be giving long-discredited racial prejudices a new potency. The notion that race is more than skin deep, they fear, could undermine principles of equal treatment and opportunity that have relied on the presumption that we are all fundamentally equal.
“We are living through an era of the ascendance of biology, and we have to be very careful,” said Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. “We will all be walking a fine line between using biology and allowing it to be abused.”
Certain superficial traits like skin pigmentation have long been presumed to be genetic. But the ability to pinpoint their...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The DNA AGE, Previous Parts of the Series
From the links in this November 11 Times' story that I checked, they go to original articles or at least its abstract.
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I fear discrimination from my Neanderthal ancestry. I lean back and bend my elbows so my arms don’t seem so long but . . . this television show “Cavemen” is only going negate the progress I’ve made.
This amounts to religious dogmatism I believe, and it's bound to have harmful consequences.
This is why faith in God is so important.
We know all people are not equal physically, no matter what anyone says. But we know they are all equal before God, who is the author of all our rights.
Wait....you mean people aren’t actually all the same???
This COULD be good......finally, people might realize....ALL PEOPLE are EQUAL, but ALL people ARE NOT the same.
Nope, over cooked. Hence the term, “A bun in the oven.”
There is an interesting theory that might explain *why* the DNA is different, but of all things it is based in eastern medicine, particularly acupuncture and herbalism.
From their point of view, the human body as a balanced system is based on on 12 imbalanced lines of energy, roughly corresponding to particular internal organs. These 12, and their associated organs, have different levels of “yin” and “yang” in them, which relates to their function as organs.
The most powerful yin organ are the lungs, in that they bring in a great deal of energy through inhaling oxygen, and only give off a small amount of waste energy in exhaling carbon dioxide.
The most powerful yang organ is the large intestines. They give off a great deal of waste energy as feces, and only uptake a small amount of energy in reclaimed moisture.
The other organs vary as to percentage of yin and yang.
This system is not uniquely human, and the Earth as a whole is also believed to have considerable variation in its level of “yin” and “yang”. Therefore, depending where you live, your body has to readjust to fit the environment.
North America, for example, is extraordinarily yang in character. This means all the plants and animals that live here will tend to have a surplus of yang. However, what we typically think of as the Orient is an extraordinarily yin environment.
Without looking, someone familiar with the situation would assume that Americans would typically be barrel chested with powerful lungs, to get every bit of yin as possible, and a slightly red hue to their skin, also symptomatic of an excess of yang. This is somewhat stereotypical for Native Americans. But even after just a few generations of living here, even those of European ancestry are starting to show some of the characteristics of living in an extra yang environment.
Conversely, what we think of as the Oriental look, they could explain as being based in having an extra powerful large intestine, to uptake as much yang as possible, because of their yin environment. This also results in the yellowish hue to the skin. Some Orientals have as much as four or five inches of their lower intestine removed in the hope that doing this will lighten their skin tone.
An interesting problem develops, however, when Americans go to the Orient, or Orientals come to North America. The Americans suddenly get a whopping huge dose of yin, which overwhelms their lungs and gives them a bad bronchitis, that is assumed to be caused by polluted air.
For their part, Orientals coming to North America get a whopping dose of yang, which most likely gives them severe constipation, their large intestines going into overdrive.
Interestingly, some plants, like ginseng, vary tremendously based on where they are grown. When grown in the Orient, ginseng is a very potent yin herb. When grown in North America, it is a very potent yang herb. Now since balanced equals healthy, North Americans should avoid North American ginseng and Orientals should avoid Oriental ginseng.
However the ginseng grown in the other place would have very strong and good effects as a medicine. So this results with an odd balance of trade, with hundreds of millions of dollars in ginseng going in the opposite direction from where it was grown.
So the bottom line is much of what we think of as race or racial characteristics, are not only based on where our ancestors lived for generations; but can change with great speed in a relatively short period of time.
Eventually, though, this will mean that those who have lived in North America for many generations will increasingly begin to look like Native Americans, and have barrel chests, powerful lungs and a reddish hue to the skin. Eventually, this will be adjusted for by our DNA, as more lasting characteristics.
Political correctness tramples truth underfoot yet again.
Right. Um, that sure is an interesting theory.
If you could make heads or tails from that post, my hats off to you. I got halfway through and got glassy eyed and short of breath. When I came to I had a vision that the word Popocatapetl was Incan for BS artist but being in the state of mind I was in, I could not attest to it.
I suspect that they were worried about the very point made in the article, that DNA sequencing could be used (or misused, misconstrued, or even lied about) to “prove” all sorts of things about black people.
This is an area where we must tread carefully. I dislike eugenicists and eugenics policy based on its history, particularly WWII.
It may be that Asians are genetically more intelligent that Europeans, and that Euros are more so than Africans. But so what? I.Q. is not everything. It matters, but it's no reason to treat people as somehow "less human" than others. Raw brainpower is not the sine qua non of humanity.
On the other hand, it may be that some races are simply better at some things (swimming, running, mathematical logic) than others. With this in mind, it may be time to reconsider the idea of eugenics — not as a method of creating a purebred "master race", but of creating better "mutts". The road to a healthier, more capable human race lies not in genetic engineering, but in increasing racially-mixed marriages between people of races with complimentary characteristics. I sometimes joke that the solution to America's "marching moron" problem and Japan's population crash is to offer financial incentives for Japanese and American youths to meet and marry. They get our big build, hardiness, and muscle mass advantages; we get their brainpower, longevity, and metabolic efficiency. Add to that the fact that race-mixing tends to smooth out the results of generational inbreeding (e.g. bad teeth, tendency to store body fat) and one might see reductions in certain congenital diseases among the offspring of such marriages.
(Euro-Asian people also tend to be more attractive than is average for either race — but this is frosting on the cake.)
It is my view that in the near future racial-genetic differences are likely to be found more significant than is now generally accepted. However, the effects of any genetic differences that may exist between members of different racial groups are insignificant compared to the effects of the differences between cultures. It is culture that drives most human behavior, not DNA. If we want a better world, we will do far better to promote good culture instead of good genes.
Values over blood.
“ALL PEOPLE are EQUAL, but ALL people ARE NOT the same”
Yes indeed. The opposite approach from outcome-based equality programs.
How do you account for mixed kids, that is, children of one black and one asian parent? Their appearance seems to be a blend of both parents, not of their particular environment.
absolute diabolical race-baiting by the freaking nyt, supposed undoer of racism.
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