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To: cornelis
If humans had biological races, there should be some non-trivial underlying hereditary features shared by a group of people and not present in other groups, or possibly average differences that could be made sense of in some statistical way.

And what can these hereditary features be? The article looks only at genetic differences and completely ignores the profound differences found in expression patterns. It is those changes in expression patterns which account for the augmented variation between humans and chimps in such areas as physical, behavioral, and cognitive expression.

Furthermore, considering that we don't even know what genetic sequences in the human genome are meaningful and how (for instance, there is a 2-3 fold spread in opinion about how many genes are contained in the human genome), it is far too early to make a determination about the extent of the biological basis of racial differences. Yet, differences, even in genetic markers follow racial differences closely enough that ethnic identity markers can usefully group people into racial categories. This becomes important not only for disease markers, but also for targeting of pharmaceutical treatments.

(Nevertheless, under the law, we're all equal.)

123 posted on 06/04/2002 8:04:02 PM PDT by Nebullis
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To: cornelis
I should add that control of expression patterns is contained in the genome but is not read as "nontrivial" differences as it is very small.
125 posted on 06/04/2002 8:05:44 PM PDT by Nebullis
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To: Nebullis
it is far too early

This crossed my mind. It's always the case, isn't it? It certainly was far too early for the 19th and 20th centuries.

127 posted on 06/04/2002 8:06:45 PM PDT by cornelis
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