NY times on DNA, race and science
- From: phil scott <phil@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2007 02:56:50 -0000
the medical implications are immense. many diseases, and cures, are
race specific.
The DNA Age
In DNA Era, New Worries About Prejudice
By AMY HARMON
When scientists first decoded the human genome in 2000, they were
quick
to portray it as proof of humankinds 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 DNA source makes
the link
between genes and race more palpable. And on mainstream blogs, in
college
classrooms and among the growing community of ancestry test-takers,
it is
prompting the question of whether more profound differences may
also be
attributed to DNA.
Nonscientists are already beginning to stitch together highly
speculative
conclusions about the historically charged subject of race and
intelligence
from the new biological data. Last month, a blogger in Manhattan
described
a recently published study that linked several snippets of DNA to
high
I.Q. An online genetic database used by medical researchers, he
told
readers, showed that two of the snippets were found more often in
Europeans
and Asians than in Africans.
No matter that the link between I.Q. and those particular bits of
DNA was
unconfirmed, or that other high I.Q. snippets are more common in
Africans,
or that hundreds or thousands of others may also affect
intelligence, or
that their combined influence might be dwarfed by environmental
factors.
Just the existence of such genetic differences between races,
proclaimed
the author of the Half Sigma blog, a 40-year-old software
developer,
means the egalitarian theory, that all races are equal, is proven
false.
Though few of the bits of human genetic code that vary between
individuals
have yet to be tied to physical or behavioral traits, scientists
have found
that roughly 10 percent of them are more common in certain
continental
groups and can be used to distinguish people of different races.
They say
that studying the differences, which arose during the tens of
thousands of
years that human populations evolved on separate continents after
their
ancestors dispersed from humanitys birthplace in East Africa, is
crucial to
mapping the genetic basis for disease.
But many geneticists, wary of fueling discrimination and worried
that
speaking openly about race could endanger support for their
research, are
loath to discuss the social implications of their findings. Still,
some
acknowledge that as their data and methods are extended to
nonmedical
traits, the field is at what one leading researcher recently called
a very
delicate time, and a dangerous time.
There are clear differences between people of different
continental
ancestries, said Marcus W. Feldman, a professor of biological
sciences at
Stanford University. Its not there yet for things like I.Q., but I
can
see it coming. And it has the potential to spark a new era of
racism if we
do not start explaining it better.
Dr. Feldman said any finding on intelligence was likely to be
exceedingly
hard to pin down. But given that some may emerge, he said he wanted
to
create ready response teams of geneticists to put such socially
fraught
discoveries in perspective.
The authority that DNA has earned through its use in freeing
falsely
convicted inmates, preventing disease and reconstructing family
ties leads
people to wrongly elevate genetics over other explanations for
differences
between groups.
Ive spent the last 10 years of my life researching how much
genetic
variability there is between populations, said Dr. David
Altshuler,
director of the Program in Medical and Population Genetics at the
Broad
Institute in Cambridge, Mass. But living in America, it is so clear
that
the economic and social and educational differences have so much
more
influence than genes. People just somehow fixate on genetics, even
if the
influence is very small.
But on the Half Sigma blog and elsewhere, the conversation is
already
flashing forward to what might happen if genetically encoded
racial
differences in socially desirable or undesirable traits are
identified.
If I were to believe the facts in this post, what should I do? one
reader
responded on Half Sigma. Should I advocate discrimination against
blacks
because they are less smart? Should I not hire them to my company
because
odds are I could find a smarter white person? Stop trying to prove
that one
group of people are genetically inferior to your group. Just stop.
Renata McGriff, 52, a health care consultant who had been
encouraging black
clients to volunteer genetic information to scientists, said she
and other
African-Americans have lately been discussing opting out of
genetic
research until its clear were not going to use science to validate
prejudices.
I dont want the children in my family to be born thinking they are
less
than someone else based on their DNA, added Ms. McGriff, of
Manhattan.
Such discussions are among thousands that followed the geneticist
James
D. Watsons assertion last month that Africans are innately less
intelligent
than other races. Dr. Watson, a Nobel Prize winner, subsequently
apologized and quit his post at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
on Long
Island.
But the incident has added to uneasiness about whether society is
prepared
to handle the consequences of science that may eventually reveal
appreciable differences between races in the genes that influence
socially
important traits.
New genetic information, some liberal critics say, could become the
latest
rallying point for a conservative political camp that objects to
social
policies like affirmative action, as happened with The Bell Curve,
the
controversial 1994 book that examined the relationship between race
and
I.Q.
Yet even some self-described liberals argue that accepting that
there may
be genetic differences between races is important in preparing to
address
them politically.
Lets say the genetic data says well have to spend two times as much
for
every black child to close the achievement gap, said Jason Malloy,
28, an
artist in Madison, Wis., who wrote a defense of Dr. Watson for the
widely
read science blog Gene Expression. Society, he said, would need to
consider how individuals can be given educational and occupational
opportunities that work best for their unique talents and
limitations.
Others hope that the genetic data may overturn preconceived notions
of
racial superiority by, for example, showing that Africans are
innately more
intelligent than other groups. But either way, the increased
outpouring of
conversation on the normally taboo subject of race and genetics
has
prompted some to suggest that innate differences should be accepted
but, at
some level, ignored.
Regardless of any such genetic variation, it is our moral duty to
treat all
as equal before God and before the law, Perry Clark, 44, wrote on a
New
York Times blog. It is not necessary, argued Dr. Clark, a retired
neonatologist in Leawood, Kan., who is white, to maintain the
pretense that
inborn racial differences do not exist.
When was the last time a nonblack sprinter won the Olympic 100
meters? he
asked.
To say that such differences arent real, Dr. Clark later said in
an
interview, is to stick your head in the sand and go blah blah blah
blah
blah until the band marches by.
Race, many sociologists and anthropologists have argued for
decades, is a
social invention historically used to justify prejudice and
persecution.
But when Samuel M. Richards gave his students at Pennsylvania
State
University genetic ancestry tests to establish the imprecision of
socially constructed racial categories, he found the exercise
reinforced
them instead.
One white-skinned student, told she was 9 percent West African,
went to a
Kwanzaa celebration, for instance, but would not dream of going to
an Asian
cultural event because her DNA did not match, Dr. Richards said.
Preconceived notions of race seemed all the more authentic when
quantified
by DNA.
Before, it was, Im white because I have white skin and grew up in
white
culture, Dr. Richards said. Now its, I really know Im white, so
white is
this big neon sign hanging over my head. Its like, oh, no, come on.
That
wasnt the point.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
--
"be wary of mathematicians..especially when they speak the truth."
.
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