I fully understand that “race” is a social construction and that the notion of “purity” is ridiculous and that the genetic difference between the “races” is minimal. And I’m not talking about any arena other than health, so please understand that this isn’t some controversial statement meant to provoke responses.
But if I am descended from the survivors of the diseases of Southern China (mother) AND Ireland (father), doesn’t this give me some sort of immunity advantage over a “monoracial” person whose genes occupied a smaller geographical area? I AM considering the historical movement of people and the fact that the mixing of people has been constant, but that would seem to be a much more gradual and local exchange than the abrupt and continent-crossing one that took place between my parents one hot and heavy night in 1971 Los Angeles.
My knowledge of evolutionary biology is rudimentary, but if evolution favors mating with individuals of different populations, shouldn’t an Asian/white coupling be a boon to the genes? With dogs, mutts live longer, right?
Feel free to answer honestly–I never get offended. Just don’t bother to mention that we’re all attractive people–pretty sure that’s documented fact…(smiley face)
Trying to avoid eugenics, but an interesting theory brought up about the recently uncovered fact that Amerindians share a fairly recent common ancestor. Suggests that this resulted in a smaller gene pool which is why disease ripped through their populations like wildfire.
Granted, Diamond explains this as being due to the lack of domesticated animals.
Well, I’m German/Irish/Cherokee, and I and all my brothers have spina bifida which I’m told is Ubiquitous in the Cherokee population. So obviously the defects don’t get bred out magicly, and lots of them are dominant.
The Great One did an article somewhat on this subject, where he basicly concluded that breeding and evolution is only really effective for defects that result in the inability to produce numerous viable offspring.
Multiracial aren’t superior. Yes, race is a social construct; moreover, it has no biological basis. Although individuals from Chinese and Irish ancestries will have different genotypes, the offspring of such individuals is not superior. Such an offspring is the result of gene flow. Gene flow actually lessens diversity within populations. Genetic diversity is precisely that which aids evolution. Consider the fact that nearly eighty percent of asians do not have the enzyme to digest lactase. Given your mother did not possess the gene and your father did, it is possible that you might or might not. Any given alleles in an offspring are arbitrary (although some do exhibit dominance over others). A multiracial individual may not be subject to certain ill ramifications from environmental conditions; however, the ability to produce viable offspring may be hampered under other environmental conditions from an evolutionary perspective.
Mongrel dogs are said to have “hybrid vigor”. Is this correct, and if so, why not humans? Are we just all so spooked by that thing with Hitler that we can’t talk about the subject?
I have often wondered myself whether people who have diverse ethnic backgrounds might not have better immune systems than people who do not.
I do know that almost all of the multi-ethnic people I have ever met have been better-than-average in the looks department – I can only think of one who I would consider unnattractive. Of course, this probably says more about my personal preferences than anything else.
With a fair amount of trepidation, I offer the following facts and speculation:
HLA types vary widely in their prevalence in different ethnic groups.
HLA types act as templates for all the different antibody types a person will ever be able to make in their lifetime. So, it is conceivable (just) that mixing “libraries” from two disparate sources would create a more diverse composite library, and a stronger immune system. One advantage for mixed heritage individuals.
Auto-immune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, and most hypothyroidism are associated with certain HLA types, especially when an individual has two copies of the same HLA gene. Being homozygous for an at-risk HLA type is less likely when parents from different ethnic groups with different predominant HLA genes conceive, so the likelihood of auto-immune disease decreases. Advantage #2.
Certain recessive traits are common only in certain ethnic groups (Tay-Sachs in Ashkenazi Jews, sickle-cell disease in sub-Saharan Africans, cystic fibrosis and Hemophilia A in Europeans), so that individuals of mixed parentage would be at very low risk for inheriting 2 defective copies of the gene. Advantage #3.
If a person ever needs a transplant, the fact that they inherited HLA genes from parents of different ethnic groups could work against them, because they would be likely to have a rare combination of HLA antigens, making finding a match much more difficult. African-Americans and Vietnamese already have a harder time finding a good match because they have HLA antigens that are uncommon in the overall pool of US residents. This is why when an African-American child needs a bone marrow transplant, there will aften be huge drives to encourage African-Americans to undergo tissue-typing. If a person has one HLA antigen which is only common in the African-American population, and another which is only common in the Vietnamese-American population, the number of potential African-Vietnamese-American donors is miniscule. Disadvantage #1 (of 1).
I certainly hope no one would ever try to assert something as all-encompassing as “Multiracial people are superior” on this basis.
With a fair amount of trepidation, I offer the following facts and speculation:
HLA types vary widely in their prevalence in different ethnic groups.
HLA types act as templates for all the different antibody types a person will ever be able to make in their lifetime. So, it is conceivable (just) that mixing “libraries” from two disparate sources would create a more diverse composite library, and a stronger immune system. One advantage for mixed heritage individuals.
Auto-immune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, and most hypothyroidism are associated with certain HLA types, especially when an individual has two copies of the same HLA gene. Being homozygous for an at-risk HLA type is less likely when parents from different ethnic groups with different predominant HLA genes conceive, so the likelihood of auto-immune disease decreases. Advantage #2.
Certain recessive traits are common only in certain ethnic groups (Tay-Sachs in Ashkenazi Jews, sickle-cell disease in sub-Saharan Africans, cystic fibrosis and Hemophilia A in Europeans), so that individuals of mixed parentage would be at very low risk for inheriting 2 defective copies of the gene. Advantage #3.
If a person ever needs a transplant, the fact that they inherited HLA genes from parents of different ethnic groups could work against them, because they would be likely to have a rare combination of HLA antigens, making finding a match much more difficult. African-Americans and Vietnamese already have a harder time finding a good match because they have HLA antigens that are uncommon in the overall pool of US residents. This is why when an African-American child needs a bone marrow transplant, there will often be huge drives to encourage African-Americans to undergo tissue-typing. If a person has one HLA antigen which is only common in the African-American population, and another which is only common in the Vietnamese-American population, the number of potential African-Vietnamese-American donors is miniscule. Disadvantage #1 (of 1).
I certainly hope no one would ever try to assert something as all-encompassing as “Multiracial people are superior” on this basis.
With a fair amount of trepidation, I offer the following facts and speculation:
HLA types vary widely in their prevalence in different ethnic groups.
HLA types act as templates for all the different antibody types a person will ever be able to make in their lifetime. So, it is conceivable (just) that mixing “libraries” from two disparate sources would create a more diverse composite library, and a stronger immune system. One advantage for mixed heritage individuals.
Auto-immune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, and most hypothyroidism are associated with certain HLA types, especially when an individual has two copies of the same HLA gene. Being homozygous for an at-risk HLA type is less likely when parents from different ethnic groups with different predominant HLA genes conceive, so the likelihood of auto-immune disease decreases. Advantage #2.
Certain recessive traits are common only in certain ethnic groups (Tay-Sachs in Ashkenazi Jews, sickle-cell disease in sub-Saharan Africans, cystic fibrosis and Hemophilia A in Europeans), so that individuals of mixed parentage would be at very low risk for inheriting 2 defective copies of the gene. Advantage #3.
If a person ever needs a transplant, the fact that they inherited HLA genes from parents of different ethnic groups could work against them, because they would be likely to have a rare combination of HLA antigens, making finding a match much more difficult. African-Americans and Vietnamese already have a harder time finding a good match because they have HLA antigens that are uncommon in the overall pool of US residents. This is why when an African-American child needs a bone marrow transplant, there will often be huge drives to encourage African-Americans to undergo tissue-typing. If a person has one HLA antigen which is only common in the African-American population, and another which is only common in the Vietnamese-American population, the number of potential African-Vietnamese-American donors is miniscule. Disadvantage #1 (of 1).
I certainly hope no one would ever try to assert something as all-encompassing as “Multiracial people are superior” on this basis.
With a fair amount of trepidation, I offer the following facts and speculation:
HLA types vary widely in their prevalence in different ethnic groups.
HLA types act as templates for all the different antibody types a person will ever be able to make in their lifetime. So, it is conceivable (just) that mixing “libraries” from two disparate sources would create a more diverse composite library, and a stronger immune system. One advantage for mixed heritage individuals.
Auto-immune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, and most hypothyroidism are associated with certain HLA types, especially when an individual has two copies of the same HLA gene. Being homozygous for an at-risk HLA type is less likely when parents from different ethnic groups with different predominant HLA genes conceive, so the likelihood of auto-immune disease decreases. Advantage #2.
Certain recessive traits are common only in certain ethnic groups (Tay-Sachs in Ashkenazi Jews, sickle-cell disease in sub-Saharan Africans, cystic fibrosis and Hemophilia A in Europeans), so that individuals of mixed parentage would be at very low risk for inheriting 2 defective copies of the gene. Advantage #3.
If a person ever needs a transplant, the fact that they inherited HLA genes from parents of different ethnic groups could work against them, because they would be likely to have a rare combination of HLA antigens, making finding a match much more difficult. African-Americans and Vietnamese already have a harder time finding a good match because they have HLA antigens that are uncommon in the overall pool of US residents. This is why when an African-American child needs a bone marrow transplant, there will often be huge drives to encourage African-Americans to undergo tissue-typing. If a person has one HLA antigen which is only common in the African-American population, and another which is only common in the Vietnamese-American population, the number of potential African-Vietnamese-American donors is miniscule. Disadvantage #1 (of 1).
I certainly hope no one would ever try to assert something as all-encompassing as “Multiracial people are superior” on this basis.
Ahem. MY children are superior, of course, but I think that’s a different issue.
What you’re thinking of is diseases like hemophilia, Tay-Sachs, sickle cell anemia, etc. which tend to become dominant in very specific ethnic groups.
However, if you’re implying that somehow the offspring of, for example, Korean and English parents would have any specific genetic advantage over the offspring of English and Scandinavian parents who aren’t related in any other way, I think that’s leaping beyond what the study of genetics is currently prepared to assert.
Moderators: please delete some of my multiples. I kept getting messages back saying my browser couldn’t connect with your server.
The short and simple version, scratch, is that inheriting a variety of HLA genes (more likely with mixed ancestry) is good for most purposes, but not so good if you were to ever need a transplant. Kind of like saying that if inbreeding is bad, then breeding between people with as diverse a genetic background as possible probably is good. But the good is of theoretical value only for the most part, once you exclude known recessive disorders from the equation.
A statement that a multi-racial background makes a person superior cannot be support by this kind of theoretical good.
Sorry, Another. We don’t like to delete multiple posts that have been commented upon, for fear of making the thead confusing.
I’m really sorry you had that problem. The board was acting up today. It was completely not your fault – it was ours. That said, I did get a good giggle out of the post after scratch’s, even though I knew it wasn’t intentional.
Well, I’m a genuine mongrel. Austrian/German/Norweigen/English/Scottish/French-Canadian at least. I’m not superior genetically, but that’s never stopped me from being superior mentally :D. In answer to your question, no, not really. It matters more what specific genes your specific parents had, not what some ‘mass median’ for that group is. Race, after all, is not very well-defined. With all the cross-breeding, there are no standards to measure against.
There was an interesting study a few years ago that would suggest that bi-racial people have slightly higher IQ scores than would be predicted based on their parents’ IQ scores. The benefit is only about 3 or 4 IQ points, IIRC. I think the study came out of Hawaii, and I don’t know if it has been replicated.
