Unnatural Selection: Chapter 17

Only one more chapter after this! Today's chapter is about various scientists, in particular a Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and a Georgia Dunston and their separate work with the genetics of small people groups.

Cavalli-Sforza:

• Researched genetic characteristics of Pygmies.
• Why? Answer: in most of the Human Genome Project, "almost every single human whose genes were under intense study was a white person of European origins, like most of the geneticists themselves." Solution: several human genome diversity projects.
  
• Quote: "The idea of race in the human species serves no purpose. Every classification is equally arbitrary." Spot-on.
• Critics of the Human Genome Project cried "discrimination." Critics of the opposite, Cavalli-Sforza's, work cried "colonialism." There's no pleasing some people.
  

Dunston:

• Investigated "genetic differences between 'blacks' and whites'."
• "Without a collection of genetic markers drawn from their own population, Dunston says, blacks will never benefit fully from the genetic revolution." Example: Since many of the tissue-typing markers for organ compatibility are from white people, black people have a harder time getting precise matches. The consequences: immune rejection, lower success rate, and death.
• "...[I]t is not at all racist...to learn how blacks differ genetically from other American ethnic groups. In fact, it might be racist not to inquire into the difference, because the result would be a continuing difference between Caucasians and African-Americans in the mortality rates for organ transplants and hereditary diseases."
• Dunston limited her project to a manageable level "by defining the populations for study based on their distinct origins in Africa." How did she trace those origins? Answer: We may be able to thank slavery (at least the careful and extensive record-keeping part) for something after all.