Interesting study

[danceguy]

Hi all,

Not sure if anyone has read this article or not, but please give it a look over. I found it to be quite interesting. :)

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/living/education/7910232.htm

[SDsalsaguy]

Nice article SG, thanks for the link.

[Swing Kitten]

That's completely awesome!! We are 99.8% the same. Why any race would consider themselves 'naturally superior' has always baffeled me.

[SDsalsaguy]

Why any race...
Not to mention that, genetically speaking, there is no such thing as race!

[KevinL]

There is still debate over the fact that racial groups respond differently to diseases, as well as medications. Most geneticists attribute human differences to environmental adaptations, not race.

Debate? There isn't really any debate over the fact that different ethnic groups get different diseases, and respond differently to medications. They do because of genetic differences, those genetic differences don't usually correspond to what people see as racial differences.

"Most" geneticists don't attribute human differences to "environmental adaptations" but rather to random genetic mutations that aren't detrimental enough to kill the individual, thus allowing the differences to be passed on to offspring.

Examples:

CYP450 2E1, the enzyme that (among other things) degrades alcohol. Several asian populations have a high prevalence of a mutated version that doesn't work very well. Those individuals can drink very little alcohol without getting alcohol posioning. Until recently that had no influence on survivablitiy.

I recall another CYP450 that works much differently (better/ worse, I can't recall) among africans than among the rest of the human population, but I can't recall the specifics.

Blue eyes. No real genetic advantage/ disadvantage, so certain populations (all descendents of the original mutant) have the phenotype in higher proportion, while others don't have it at all.

The final message though, is real enough. Humans are more similar to one another than they are different from one another.

Kevin

[salsachinita]

Humans are more similar to one another than they are different from one another.

:!: This is something I have been trying to get across to people ALL my life :!:

Thanks, SG, for posting the link.

[pygmalion]

Hmm. I know I digress, but I wonder if they tested for a "dancer" gene? :? 8) :lol:

[peachexploration]

Late getting to this one. Very good article. Thanks SG.

[pygmalion]

Very interesting, in light of the "White Men Can't Dance" thread from a week or two ago. :roll: Hmm.

[etchuck]

Agrees with Jenn's last remark above.

Does it surprise me? No. I think most of us who have had an ear on biomedical science and genetics and the genome project have known this for a while. We are remarkably similar to chimpanzees in our genomes, and the differences between each individual is amazingly small. Just think about it... it's a difference of two books in a library of 1000 volumes.

But yes, it's what is in those two books that makes certain populations more susceptible to disease than others. Those two books are the library we use to adapt to our environments and have made us who we are "racially" over the thousands of years we've been in existence and will continue to be rewritten as we progress on (men and women are becoming taller on average). It's quite an amazing thought, that we are trying to develop drugs or diet programs based on the differences each of us have in those pages. Really incredible. How those books allow us from being chimpanzees to the wide variety of humans we have... that's a thought. (Really, I don't know of many red-head chimps, or blonde chimps in nature; but there is so much variation among humans... .)

But that's a great article which shows a wonderful light on science and how predjudical thinking that is so prevalent and engrained in our society should be challenged. I admit, it is those types of experiments that really got me hooked on doing research science as a career path.

[Genesius Redux]

Agrees with Jenn's last remark above.

Does it surprise me? No. I think most of us who have had an ear on biomedical science and genetics and the genome project have known this for a while. We are remarkably similar to chimpanzees in our genomes, and the differences between each individual is amazingly small. Just think about it... it's a difference of two books in a library of 1000 volumes.

I was going to mention that--then thought in the present context it would only muddy the waters. After all, in wishing to dismantle the fictions and pseudo-science of race it doesn't help the argument to point out how much like chimps we all are.

The old concept of species sometimes helps--species considered as a breeding population (not as a population that can breed). Dogs and wolves produce viable offspring--yet they are different species. And the differentiation there is only about 15,000 years old. Human populations had been geographically isolated from each other by many more thousands of years.

But it's also worth noting that for a good 3,000 years or more advances in travel have allowed and encouraged humans to interbreed far more than dogs and wolves. The last 400 years has increased that interaction dramatically, and the over the past century we've established essentially a world human community.

So as the political barriers of apartheid and such are dismantled, and the social barriers are overcome through practice and familiarity, the supposed differences in race will be a thing of the receding weird past, like the Aristotelian science of substance and accident.

Still, in the present case, if we observe how similar our genetic makeup is to the chimpanzee, that will easily allow us to see that tremendous genetic similarity doesn't override important, even crucial, genetic differences.

[Flat Shoes]

Does it matter how much we are alike, or how much we differ?

If we all share 99.8, 99.3 or 99.9999 of the same genes ... what does it matter?

Personally I like and/or respect people based on who they are, not what genes people have. Being the 'same as me' has nothing to do with this.

Actually I enjoy people that are different from myself. Differences add spice to life. Differences are one of the bases for all evolution, wether it's evolution of ideas or evolution of the species.

Also I don't think any racist would care about these numbers. A white hating blacks (or opposite) would not suddenly change his mind based on these numbers.

When people react to such information with political correctness, it also kind of annoys me a little bit. What people are saying are somtehing like "We're all the same, so we should respect each other." The reason I don't like that is because it implies "don't respect those who are different." (It's simple logic, if you respected those who are different, you wouldn't need people to be the same to respect them. Hence the statement is unnecessary in the first place.)

Just admit this: We are all different, but some groups people share some properties that other don't. Some are more alike than others, some are more different. That is the truth. And please respect/love/disrespect/hate people for who they are, not the amount of similar genes.

(Chimps share 98% of their genes with us humans. Pigs share 96% of the genes.)

[etchuck]

Well, the scientific/philosophical side thinks it's important, but only in the sense that so many mechanisms in biology are so well conserved. I admit it is interesting to see how things are different from each other and what determines those differences. (Of course, any creationists out there would disagree...)

Nevertheless, I also agree that diversity and different perspectives enhances the whole. It's fascinating to me how people of different backgrounds decide to interact with each other. But diversity does break down stereotypes and provides progress in achieving goals or educational purposes. At one of my meetings last month, I took part in a team-building exercise which emphasized the fact that in many cases, a team of people working together despite being from diverse backgrounds can come up with better solutions (usually) than those from similar backgrounds. Very interesting how that worked.

So sure, understand and accept differences, but no one difference is de facto superior to another.

[jon]

So sure, understand and accept differences, but no one difference is de facto superior to another.

Cultural relativism leads into the trap of being unable to condemn any human behavior.

[Genesius Redux]

Also you have the tricky issue of what matters--it's often too easy for white people to say race doesn't matter. People of African descent, Latino, Native American, any number of people not of direct European ethnicity have to deal with the fallout of race every day. Basic human sensitivity requires an awareness of the deep impact of race on ways people think of themselves.

Likewise in biomedical issues--when dealing with transplants, for example, ethnicity can play a big role.

And many forms of empowerment post-Civil rights were constructed along lines of race, ethnicity, or gender. Many black political leaders are understandably suspicious when white people start saying everyone is basically alike--because they start to wonder whether that means that social programs will begin to be dismantled.

So being non-prejudicial in contemporary culture is not quite so simple as singing "We Are the World." Like it or not, we have to deal with the history of racial science--we can't just make it go away with an act of will. There are genuine benefits to paying attention to differences of class, gender, ethnicity, and the like--but to do that without falling into the trap of racial stereotyping is something that takes a lot of effort. I think that acknowledging the difficulty is an essential first step in building a better understanding.

For that reason, while I'd love to jump up and down and say, "Hey, this study shows that people are mostly alike," I have to say that I kind of knew that before--and having it stated with the scientific authority of modern genetics doesn't do one blessed thing for, let's say, the tremendous economic inequities that you see when you're just driving down the Palisades Parkway.

The society of which MLK dreamed and for which Malcolm X fought is one that we're still going to have work to achieve.

[Flat Shoes]

At one of my meetings last month, I took part in a team-building exercise which emphasized the fact that in many cases, a team of people working together despite being from diverse backgrounds can come up with better solutions (usually) than those from similar backgrounds. Very interesting how that worked.


You can look at this through theories of evolution.

A group with little diversity will be more dependent uppon mutation to evolve. A group with a lot of diversities can evolve much more before the become dependant uppon mutation.

The same for new ideas. A group where most people think alike are much more dependant uppon mutation of the existing ideas than a group with diverse backgrounds. The latter group has much more potential coming from only mixing the already existing ideas.

Thankfully mutation rates for new ideas are much higher than mutation rates in biological evolution.

Another effect of evolving ideas that are similar to biological evolution is inbreeding. If you have a closed group of people with little interaction with the outside environment, inbreeding of ideas tend to occur. The result is more and more uniformity inside the group, they believe more strongly in their own ideas and can become quite fanatical about them. The lack of diversity has caused inbreeding and sickness of ideas. Just as it will biologically for small groups with little interaction with the outside world.