[widowithfoursons]

AHA! Now we can get past ethnicity for good, and affirm once and for all that G-d is colorblind. Merry Christmas!

[joesnuffy]

Tell it to the Japanese ....BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[jlogajan]

Strictly speaking, nothing has any meaning genetically speaking. Genetics just are.

However, it is absurd on its face to say that skin color is not genetic. Otherwise babies would be born with random skin colors, regardless of parental skin color, etc.

Politics and religion should be kept out of science. They just corrupt and debase things.

[r9etb]

And yet racial characteristics "breed true," in the sense that you don't see to many Nordic blondes being born to members of the Masai, and vice versa -- and also in the sense that the characteristics of the parents show up in their mixed-race kids.

So the title of the story seems wrong to begin with -- and is confirmed to be wrong by the body: They found 10 gene variations that could reliably tell apart, genetically, 20 men from northern Portugal and 20 men from Sao Tome island on the west coast of Africa.

IOW, "skin color" does not define the genetic difference -- something else does.

But racial differences are observably genetic, regardless.

[Cyber Liberty]

"Race not reflected in genes, study says"

Tell that to people who suffer from Sickle-Cell Anemia or Tay Sachs....

[FreedomFlyer]

"To their surprise, they found maternal DNA suggested that even the "white" people had, on average, 33 percent of genes that were of Amerindian ancestry and 28 percent African."

---

So there are no racial genetic differences but there are genetic differences between African and Amerindian ancestry. This is nonsense.

[taxed2death]

White men can't jump?

[Dan Day]

The Brazilian researchers looked at one of the most racially mixed populations in the world for their study, which found there is no way to look at someone's genes and determine his or her race.

Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but if you wanted to look for the genetic markers for race, wouldn't you want to look at and then compare the *least* racially mixed populations? That way the differences would stand out most clearly, and not be muddled by generations of mixing.

[AppyPappy]

DING

[Billy_bob_bob]

Yes, race has no meaning genetically. This is why black people routinely give birth to white people, why white people routinely give birth to yellow people, and why hispanics routinely give birth to blacks. You see, it's true! Race has no meaning genetically!

And, in further news from the Bolshevik Science Academy, green is really blue, 2+2 actually equals seven, and gravity is a reactionary, racist force that only has an effect on those who don't truly believe in the people's revolution.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled brainwashing, already in progress....

[babygene]

I have to say that I don't understand this genetic stuff. Maybe someone can clear this up for me.

If you look at the K9 population, or the feline population you have breeds of dogs and cats. You have black dogs and white dogs and yellow and brown dogs. Same with cats...

You have different physical charistics within the dog and cat specise. Yet all dogs can interbreed, and all cats can interbreed. But dogs cant interbreed with cats.

This is a serious question (no flames please) and I'ed like other opinions. Is the difference in breeds of dogs or cats the same as diferent races in humans? Would you be able to tell the breed of a dog from it's genes? I read somewhere that there was only a percent or two difference between the genes of a mouse and a human.

I've never herard this talked about or explaned.

[Consort]

Everything is genetic, even children. If your parents didn't have any children, chances are that you won't have any either.

[monday]

"The Brazilian researchers looked at one of the most racially mixed populations in the world for their study, which found there is no way to look at someone's genes and determine his or her race"

"To their surprise, they found maternal DNA suggested that even the "white" people had, on average, 33 percent of genes that were of Amerindian ancestry and 28 percent African. "

On the one hand they say they can't determine race by someones genes, on the other hand they can determine that 33% of genes in whites are Amerindian and 28% African. Which is it?

I thought we all shared essentially the same genes? To say that 33% of genes in whites can be identified as Amerindian seems highly unlikely as Chimps only differ from us by about 2% of their genetic structure.

Something makes this smell like a politically motivated "scientific study" to me. My guess is the results were predetermined and the data simply filled in to support it. Not the most reliable method of scientific inquiry.

[MissAmericanPie]

"Race Has No Meaning Genetically, Researchers Say"

Maybe not, but culture certainly does have meaning, lots and lots of it.

[MattAMiller]

It seems obvious to me that race is a concept people have made up. I'm not sure what one would look for if one were looking for a genitic meaning for race. The whole concept of genetics runs counter to the idea of race as some sort of fundamental aspect of nature.

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

Hmmmm. For some reason this sounds like B.S.

[Pharmboy]

A subspecies is defined as:

A naturally occuring geographical variant of a species.

Our race-obsessed Federal Government defines race as:

The concept of race as used by the Census Bureau reflects self-identification by people according to the race or races with which they most closely identify. These categories are sociopolitical constructs and should not be interpreted as being scientific or anthropological in nature. Furthermore, the race categories include both racial and national-origin groups.

[MEGoody]

Boy, Darwin would be shocked at this. As I recall, in his book "The Descent of Man," he indicated that the darker the skin color, the less 'evolved' the human. Who woulda thunk that Darwin didn't know what the heck he was talking about.

[VeritatisSplendor]

The is a remarkable amount of scientific ignorance displayed on this thread.

The short summary is -- apart from the genes related to the actual visible physical differences between "races", there are extremely few genes which reliably distinguish between "races". There are a few mutations (sickle-cell anemia, Tay-Sachs) which are much likelier to be found in one group than another, but which are still rare in all groups. But any gene which is widespread in one "race" and not related to visible racial characteristics is almost certain to be widespread in other races too.

Breeds of dogs differ by less, genetically, than the most pure-bred specimens of human races -- the human races are typically separated by a thousand or more generations, the dog breeds by a couple of hundred generations.

[Jeff Gordon]

Brazilian researchers says all one needs to know about the accuracy of this study. Richard Feynman wrote some sad yet humerous articles about the teaching conditions and methods in Brazilian Universities. Brazilian reserachers know as much about the scientific method as Creationist.