how+is+one+medicine+more+effective+towards+one+particular+“race”+more+than+the+other?

"[|BiDil], a drug combination for treating heart failure, has proved three times more effective in black patients than it has for their white counterparts" - Manufacturer (NitroMed Inc)

Have you ever heard of race specific medications? Have you ever wondered //why// they have certain medications for certain racial groups? Furthermore, **how is this effective? Are there really better or worse effects of different medicines on different races? IS RACE MORE THAN SKIN DEEP?** Today, many people only say that race is "the color of your skin", and it is usually classified in groups such as "Asian" or "White" or "Black" or "Indian" etc. Notice that the first and last classifications are groups of people from a certain //place// though. This led me to think that ancestry and where you are from, as well as skin color, define race better than JUST skin color alone. Then again, everyone has different opinions on race because frankly, the definition, race itself, is a variable. It is defined and redefined a lot, and each person could be very opinionated about the topic. Does race exist? A commonly asked question. Could it be further looked into through this medical research though? Because after all, why would there be //race-specific// medications if race did not exist? There has to be a defining characteristic, which brings us into this topic.



(Keep in mind that race is a variable and everyone has a different opinion. The following is just a basic definition coming from research with a few different sources). So if race existed and it were to be considered as a combination of ancestry, skin color, and where you are from, then everyone would be of a different race. Because you cannot make categories for each and every race, there are four main groups which are known as the following:


 * Australoid




 * Negro




 * Mongolian




 * Caucasian



How does this all relate to medicine? Well there are different race-specific medicines that work better or are more effective against fighting the illness when they are used by a certain race. [|Nina Jablonski], a professor of anthropology at Penn State, recently gave a TED Talk titled [|Breaking the Illusison of Race], filmed in February 2009 and put online in June 2009, which said that skin color was determined by a person's proximity to the equator; when you are closer you come in more contact with [|ultraviolet light]. Slowly, through generations, skin can darken or change color depending on exposure to that light. This trait was passed on throughout generations. This makes sense; it proves race does not really exist but there is a distinction between skin colors, and there is factual reasoning and information to back up this discovery. Although if there are different medicines for different races, race must be more than skin deep.

Which brings us back to ancestry. Even today, different diseases are found different places around the world. For example, a disease may plague Africa, but might not spread around the United States. This effects the history for families and their ancestors, which could explain race-specific medicine more fully for us.

Let's relate this to two small families. One family has a history of cancer, and the other family has never had cancer. Each family has a child. The child in family one would be more likely to get cancer later in life, but it might not hit them as hard as it hit the family members before him or her because that family has a history with cancer. The child in family two would not have a great chance of getting cancer, but if they did get cancer is would probably be more severe and hit them pretty hard because their ancestors did not have cancer. An example of this is that it is proven is that African-American women are much less likely than Caucasian women to get cancer, but when they do they usually cannot recover because it is a more severe case. Caucasian women have a much greater chance of getting cancer, but also have a much greater chance of recovery. This has to do with ancestry (history of cancer throughout generations in each family).



Then wouldn't each family have a different condition? Why does this effect race? Well, like said before, if the color of skin was effected by ultraviolet light, and that would distinguish different people from different places. When one disease goes to one place but not another (such as a disease common in Africa but not in America) then that group living in Africa would be prone to that disease. Their skin color would tell doctors pretty much where they are from, so their ancestry affects the medicine they would be taking. That is why there is race-specific medicine; it works better on different "races".

AnnBibJamieson

Next, I plan to look more into certain traits of different races (such as hair, eyes, lips, etc) and discover more about **why** certain races are different with those traits (for example, why is the hair of a Caucasian different than that of an African American). I wanted to look into this more because my topic this time brought up the question: Is race really skin deep? This made me consider that question even further to notice not only different skin but also different traits overall. If the UV light explains the skin (theoretically) then how could you explain those other traits? I plan to research this online and through books and newspapers. If I had unlimited time and money for research, I would hire scientists and researchers to help me find and sort through information to look into the topic more. I would also take tests and examine things under microscope to see the physical difference between that trait in each race (for example: hair, looking to see how different each sample looks, if different at all, and think about why). Even though I do not have unlimited time or resources, I do plan to unravel that mystery next in my research about race.

Therefore questions would be like the following //(Not only limited to Caucasians and African-Americans, also traits common to Indians? Asians? etc. But for these example questions I'm just using those two as samples)//:

- Why is the ______ (hair, nose, eyes, etc) of an African-American different than the ______ (hair, nose, eyes, etc) of a Caucasian? - What traits are common to African-Americans but not to Caucasians? And vice versa? Coincidence or is there a reason for it? - Could different traits been adaptions to certain situations (like where they lived)? - We learned UV light could explain the different skin colors based on where ancestors lived, so how could the traits be explained? could it link back up to ancestry?

More questions will definitely arise and contribute to what I have already during research, but this gives me a strong start, not to mention other facts I will pick up in that research to add on to my overall topic.

STOP: WIKI IS DONE.

NOTE: INFORMATION BELOW IS TOTALLY UNORGANIZED. IT'S SIMPLY NOTES. THE WIKI IS ABOVE.

note to self: remember to include info from the readings and pictures and 4 different types of races. also how different races play sports in different conditions better or worse + interviews with people and videos.

If we are all mixed races, how is one medicine more effective towards one particular “race” more than the other? Does race effect more than your skin (your insides too) or is it only skin deep? (Which furthers us into the question what is race? Skin color or more than that?) Are certain disease more common amongst certain races? Why? __Some facts:__
 * Black women have a lower incidence of breast cancer than white women, but once diagnosed they are more likely to die of the disease.
 * The black death hit Europe hard - but the people in Africa were about to avoid catching it. Why?
 * Black people have much higher odds of having sickle cell because there is a genetic history of sickle cell in Africans. This means that it can be inherited from the parents.
 * some things are cultural but some are genetic.

If a person has blue eyes, then there's a good chance that some of their ancestors had blue eyes as well. If there was a genetic anomaly introduced into a particular large population of blue-eyed people a few centuries ago, then the odds are greater that somebody who has blue eyes (who most likely did have blue-eyed ancestors) to have that anomaly, than for somebody who doesn't have blue eyes (who might or might not have had blue-eyed ancestors) to have it. In this example, having blue eyes doesn't //lead to// having the anomaly, as presumably not //all// blue-eyed people in the past had that condition, but even though there is not a //causative// relationship between the two, there is still some type of relationship between them. I do not know specifically about this type of cyst, but going on a bit of speculation here... it could be that back in the 1500's, something happened in some nation in Africa which caused a particular gene influencing the cyst to become common. Perhaps a powerful ruler had this rare condition, for example, but had many wives and thus produced many children who also had it. As time went by, and as people from one nation or tribe interacted with others, the percentage of Africans who had the trait increased, while there was no significant change in how common the trait was in any other group of people. Again, in this scenario, having an African ancestry would not //cause// the person to have the genetic anomaly, but the odds would be greater that any random African would have it than that any random other person. This could still work if the cause is not directly genetic. For example, if this type of cyst is caused by not having enough or too much Vitamin X in your body, and if there is a gene that influences Vitamin X production, which is missing in one population, that could again make it more common for a person with one ancestry to have the condition than someone from another ancestry.

The way this sort of thing can work is that in a group of people that tend to marry within the group, certain genes will become more common over time in the offspring of that group. Some genes are more common in Jews than in Christians. Some genes are more common in Swedes than in Italians. Some genes are more common in particular families than in others. Some genes are more common in certain groups in the United States than in the homelands of those groups. The fact that until recently in this country folks really didn't marry across racial lines very much (and often not across ethnic or religious lines either) means that we can treat race as one of the definers of certain genetic groups. It can be a variety of traits, not just diseases. For example, skin cancer is more common in Caucasians than in African Americans, because more Caucasians have very pale skin that lacks melanistic protection from the sun's rays. That doesn't mean African-Americans don't get skin cancer, just that their risk of developing it given the same environmental exposure is lower. We think of sickle cell anemia, for example, as an African-American disease, but outside of the United States it is a genetic trait found in people from hot countries where malaria thrives. About 1 out of every 500 African-American babies born in the United States has sickle cell anemia. However, world-wide, sickle cell disease is most common among people from Africa, India, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean, regardless of race. The high prevalence of the defective gene in these regions may be due to the fact that carriers of a mutation in the beta-subunit of hemoglobin are more resistant to malaria. Malaria is a disease caused by a parasite that is transmitted to a person when they are bitten by an infected mosquito. The sometimes fatal disease is common in hot countries, and causes recurring chills and fever. Another example is the forms of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 that are associated with an increased risk of breast cancer. Usually, people inherit one of several hundred different mutations of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. But for some reason, Eastern European (Ashkenazi) Jews seem to inherit only three of theses different mutations. Ashkenazi Jews are also 10 times more likely to have mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes than any other ethnic group. Yet another example is the gene that causes something called maple syrup urine disease (MSUD), which is a disorder that affects the way the body breaks down three amino acids, leucine, isoleucine, and valine so the victims end up with toxic levels in their blood. It isn't common in most populations, except for one. Among the Mennonites in Pennsylvania, as many as 1 out of every 176 babies is born with the disorder. Again, that doesn't mean it can't show up in someone in a completely different population, just that it is more likely to show up there. So, you ask "What is the significance of the fact that I am a white woman with this medical condition?" The only significance is that you have either inherited a gene from one or both of your parents that allows the development of these cysts, or you may have developed a spontaneous mutation in a gene so that now you are more likely to develop cysts, or you have been exposed to some environmental factor that causes your body to develop cysts. I think you may be referring to fibroadenomas, a growth that is the most common benign lump in the breast and the most common breast lump in women less than 30 years of age. Fibroadenomas are usually found as solitary lumps, but about 10-15% of women have multiple lumps that may affect both breasts. According to records kept by various agencies, African-American women tend to develop fibroadenomas more frequently and at an earlier age than white women. The cause of fibroadenoma is not known, and why one group develops them earlier and more than another is also not known. It does not mean that only African-Americans develop them. White and Asian women can also have them. So in a way, yes, it is just a statistic.

It's basically the same reason that a family history of stroke (or some other disease) puts you at risk for stroke: your ancestors had genes that, for whatever reason, put them at risk of stroke, and as their descendant you're likely to have the same genes. The concept we call "race" is hard to define exactly, but it's largely based on genetic heritage: there's a whole set of traits that are more likely to occur in African Americans, not just the obvious ones like skin color, because racial groups are mostly defined by ancestry. Some of those genes make certain diseases more likely, although the specific reasons depend on exactly how the disease works. Sometimes, it's easy to come up with a plausible explanation for why those genes would be more common in those populations (e.g. sickle cell is more common in populations that come from places where malaria is common, because it provides a defense against malaria), but other times it might just be a historical fluke, especially for something benign that doesn't have much effect on reproductive success.

This is most easily answered by thinking about where each race on the planet evolved. A guy named Jared Diamond wrote a book called Guns, Germs and Steel. It explains why different cultures grew and developed differently in different parts of the world. Great explanation of why people in the northern climates have different food needs than those in the south as well. Think about where most of the African Americans have their history, and where there evolution began, and what kind of climate they lived in. Now think about where most of the European caucasion decent people evolved and the climate they lived in. These are 2 very different worlds of evolution, and the bodies will develop differently. This also means that there has to be some subtle differences in how the bodies deal with certain illnesses and diseases. This may now explain why you have a condition that is not common to your race, but it gives you somewhere to start to understand. Hope it helps.

" Yes. I talked about it in science last year. My teacher told me (and the other black students in our class) that we have a lesser chance of catching some disease that is passed on by mosquito's (I don't remember, but I think its malaria or something) because since mosquito's pass it on in Africa so much, most of us have developed a special blood cell (I don't remember if that's what he said or whatever) that doesn't let us catch it easily. And he said that the white kids in the class would have more of a chance of catching it (he is white too so don't get any racist ideas or whatever). So,  yes it's usually an adaptation made by your ancestors that doesn't let you catch something (or easily lets you catch something). " Pasted from <[|http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AkpwnZ1UpuAYJaIKCjHaQi8jzKIX;_ylv=3?qid= 20080303152908AAtoCfT]> Yes it is genetics. Genetics also explains why there are large differences between white and black in certain traits. Pasted from <[|http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AkpwnZ1UpuAYJaIKCjHaQi8jzKIX;_ylv=3?qid= 20080303152908AAtoCfT]> Genetics probably. Maybe in a few hundred years, blacks in America after they adapt to the diet more so (maybe they need more time), they will be more likely to get osteoporosis rather than sickle cell. Pasted from <[|http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AkpwnZ1UpuAYJaIKCjHaQi8jzKIX;_ylv=3?qid= 20080303152908AAtoCfT]> yes it is genetic cause when you have some ancestors they might have gotten it and the disease passes. Pasted from <[|http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AkpwnZ1UpuAYJaIKCjHaQi8jzKIX;_ylv=3?qid= 20080303152908AAtoCfT]> ^^^ in the case of cancer! Whites get it more because it was passed to them from their parents genes, but it's more severe when blacks get it because they don't have all that many ancestors that had the disease so they are new to it - but less prone to it.

No genetic data has ever shown that one group of people is inherently superior to another. Equality is a moral value central to the idea of human rights; discrimination against any group should never be tolerated. Groups of human beings have moved around throughout history. Those that share the same culture, language or location tend to have different genetic variations than other groups. This is becoming less true, though, as populations mix. Everyone's genetic material carries a useful, though incomplete, map of his or her ancestors' travels. Studies looking for health disparities between individuals shouldn't rely solely on this identity. They should also consider a person's cultural background. Social definitions of what it means to be "Hispanic" or "black" have changed over time. People who claim the same race may actually have very different genetic histories. Trying to use genetic differences between groups to show differences in intelligence, violent behaviors or the ability to throw a ball is an oversimplification of much more complicated interactions between genetics and environment. When scientists decide to divide their subjects into groups based on ethnicity, they need to be clear about why and how these divisions are made to avoid contributing to stereotypes. Although some diseases are connected to genetic markers, these markers tend to be found in many different racial groups. Overemphasising genetics may promote racist views or focus attention on a group when it should be on the individual. Human disease is the product of a mishmash of factors: genetic, cultural, economic and behavioral. Interdisciplinary efforts that involve the social sciences are more likely to be successful. Policy makers should be careful about simplifying and politicising scientific data. When presenting science to the public, the media should address the limitations of race-related research. Any high school or college student learning about genetics should also learn about misguided attempts in the past to use science to justify racism. New textbooks should be developed for this purpose. The Stanford group didn't always agree when coming up with these ideas. Predictably enough, the biomedical scientists tended to think of race in neutral, clinical terms; the social scientists and scholars of the humanities argued that concepts of race cannot be washed clean of their cultural and historical legacies. But both groups, according to the letter, recognise the power of the gene in the public imagination and the historical dangers of its misrepresentation as deterministic and immutable. Pasted from <[]>
 * 1.** [|**All races are created equal**]
 * 2. An Argentinian and an Australian are more likely to have differences in their DNA than two Argentinians**
 * 3. A person's history isn't written only in his or her genes**
 * 4: Members of the same race may have different underlying genetics**
 * 5.** [|**Both nature and nurture play important parts in our behaviors and abilities**]
 * 6. Researchers should be careful about using racial groups when designing experiments**
 * 7. Medicine should focus on the individual, not the race**
 * 8. The study of genetics requires cooperation between experts in many different fields**
 * 9. Oversimplified science feeds popular misconceptions**
 * 10.** [|**Genetics 101 should include a history of racism**]

[] [] [] [] []- Diseases-44056.shtml []

Tuesday, May 07, 2002 By Byron Spice, Science Editor, Post-Gazette Tobago is a small part of a tiny nation, a tropical Caribbean isle with an area of just 116 square miles located northeast of its larger partner, Trinidad. But when it comes to prostate cancer, Tobago looms big. Men of African descent on Tobago have a rate of prostate cancer that, as best as can be estimated, is three or four times higher than that of white Americans and maybe twice as high as African Americans. The government of Trinidad and Tobago is looking for some answers and so is Clareann Bunker, an epidemiologist at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. For the past five years, Bunker and her colleagues have tried to screen all 5,000 Tobagoan men between the ages of 40 and 79 for prostate cancer. With about 63 percent of the men screened to date, Bunker doesn't yet have a complete answer, but she thinks she knows part of the reason: genetics. Compared to Caucasian males, men of African descent are more likely to carry a genetic mutation that helps them efficiently process the male hormone testosterone, Bunker said. That results in the growth of strong bones but, in combination with a virus called human herpesvirus 8, also seems to heighten the men's risk of prostate cancer. That's not to say that the men's diet and lifestyle don't contribute to their high prostate cancer rates, said Robert Ferrell, a Pitt professor of human genetics. "But so far," he added, "we haven't been able to identify any obvious environmental explanation." East Indians, the other major population group on Tobago, don't share the same high risk of prostate cancer. It's too soon to say whether the findings from Tobago will provide any insight for African-American men, who die of prostate cancer at twice the rate of their white counterparts. But as more attention is paid to this and other disparities in health between black and white Americans, it seems only natural to wonder how much might be attributed to underlying genetic differences. It's a line of inquiry that is fraught with danger of misinterpretation. And despite the fact that genes can have powerful effects on the health of individuals, "genetics does not account for disparity in health care," Ferrell said.
 * Genetics and race: Researchers explore why rates of diseases vary from one population to another**
 * [[image:file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CANNACL%7E1.ORG%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_image001.gif width="10" height="10"]] || [[image:file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CANNACL%7E1.ORG%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_image002.jpg width="249" height="384"]] ||
 * [[image:file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CANNACL%7E1.ORG%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_image001.gif width="10" height="10"]] || **Robert Ferrell, professor of human genetics at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, examines a test tube holding blood from a man from Tobago. Researchers hope to unravel why men of African descent on the tiny Caribbean isle have a much higher incidence of prostate cancer than white Americans or African Americans. (John Beale, Post-Gazette)** ||
 * [[image:file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CANNACL%7E1.ORG%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_image001.gif width="10" height="10"]] || [[image:file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CANNACL%7E1.ORG%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_image003.gif width="209" height="103"]] ||
 * [[image:file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CANNACL%7E1.ORG%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_image001.gif width="10" height="10"]] || **Click[|here to read]Part I.** ||

The problem is, what constitutes a race might seem obvious to most people, but race doesn't mean much from a biological standpoint. Genetically speaking, nothing differentiates one race from another. All humans share the same set of genes. There is no African gene, no Caucasian gene, no Asian gene. Certainly, genetic differences exist and even small differences can have big effects; consider that animals as different as chimpanzees and humans share 99 percent of their genetic code. And even among humans, genetic variations obviously exist between individuals. Some genes are expressed, or "turned on," in some people and not in others. Some genes tend to develop mutations, which may alter body functioning or physical appearance, and these mutations get passed on to offspring. But these variations don't occur neatly along racial lines. Scientists calculate that there is an average genetic variation of 5 percent between racial groups. But that leaves a whopping 95 percent of variation that occurs within racial groups. Even the most obvious distinguishing factor -- skin color -- can vary enormously within a race, said Joseph L. Graves Jr., an evolutionary biologist at Arizona State University West in Phoenix. And the dark skin of a sub-Saharan African is not unlike the dark skin of a Caucasoid in India, added Graves, author of a 2001 book, "The Emperor's New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millenium." That's why most scientists say race is a social construct, not a biological one. In other words, social rules determine what races are and what they mean. For instance, someone is commonly considered "black" if he has one black parent and one white parent, or even if he just has one black grandparent. From a biological standpoint, however, there is no logic for such labelling. If race has a bearing on health, it may simply be as a marker for the geographic origins of certain populations. In the Eastern Hemisphere, where humans have lived for at least 2 million years, differences that developed in skin color were closely correlated with latitude and, thus, exposure to sunlight. (The same pattern is not apparent in the Western Hemisphere, where humans migrated only about 35,000 years ago). Sickle cell anemia, most closely identified in the United States with black Americans, is often found in African and Mediterranean peoples, Ferrell noted, apparently because that genetic mutation offered an advantage in battling the malaria endemic to those areas. Sickle cell anemia is rarely seen in descendants of people from northern Europe, where malaria is absent. Conversely, cystic fibrosis is a common genetic disorder in people of northern European descent, but far less so in Africans. In this case, no one is sure why, Ferrell said, but presumably some environmental factor that favored people with the cystic fibrosis mutation existed in northern Europe thousands of years ago and was not also present in Africa. Those are both diseases that are caused by a single mutation, so the genetic link is clear-cut. But for the major diseases that cause or contribute to most deaths and disabilities, the genetic contribution is harder to pinpoint. For these diseases, such as heart disease, high blood pressure and cancer, multiple genetic mutations are thought to increase the susceptibility of some individuals, but environmental factors, such as diet and lifestyle, also play an essential role in development of these diseases. So it's much harder to make the case that high blood pressure is a bigger burden on blacks because of their genetic makeup, even though it plagues a third of all African Americans, compared to a quarter of European Americans. Black Americans are 80 percent more likely to die of stroke than whites. Some have speculated that African slaves who were better able to retain salt were more likely to have survived the deprivations of the Middle Passage on their way to America and that the same genetic makeup, passed on by the survivors, has put later generations of black Americans at risk for developing high blood pressure. But there are also a number of societal and cultural factors -- the stress of living in a prejudiced society, lack of access to health care, poor diet -- that also might predispose African-Americans to hypertension. Complicating matters is that no one really knows which combination of genes is responsible for susceptibility to hypertension. It's likely that a large number of mutated genes may contribute to high blood pressure, but that not all patients may have all those mutations. "I don't think there's such a thing as black hypertension, Hispanic hypertension and white hypertension," said Ferrell, whose lab does the genetic analysis for a large, four-city study of high blood pressure that is comparing black, white and Hispanic populations. "It's too complicated. It can't be that simple."
 * A social construct**

What researchers are looking for in such studies are certain genes that tend to mutate more than others. Some of these so-called polymorphisms -- such as the one related to prostate cancer risk in Tobagoan men -- arguably have an effect on health and how people respond to medications. But Graves said biomedical researchers need to take greater care in analyzing this data. In his book, he questions whether the prostate cancer polymorphism is truly the indicator that some researchers have suggested. That particular polymorphism can vary in length -- men with long versions are thought to be at increased risk for the cancer. The definition of long and short is arbitrary. Depending on what cutoff is used, he said, the frequency of the long form isn't necessarily much greater in black Americans than it is in whites. On the other hand, Graves is persuaded that differences in the frequency of another mutation -- the CCR5 gene -- might help explain why there are more people of European as compared to African descent who are resistant to the AIDS virus. The CCR5 mutation increases the resistance to infection by the human immunodeficiency virus and is much more common in people of European descent. At the same time, non-genetic factors -- principally the lack of male circumcision and an associated greater prevalence of chanchroid sores -- play important roles in the spread of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, he added. Differences in the frequencies of certain polymorphisms also can affect how people respond to medications, said Dr. Bruce Pollock, chief of geriatrics and neuropsychiatry in the Pitt psychiatry department. For instance, African Americans seem to have a higher frequency of one mutation that reduces the liver's ability to break down certain tricyclic antidepressant drugs, so they are more likely than their white counterparts to suffer side effects. Blacks also have a higher frequency of a mutation that increases the speed at which a newer class of antidepressants, such as Prozac, take effect. But none of these mutations are specific to one race and it is only their frequency that varies, Pollock emphasized. "Nobody would make clinical decisions based on a racial profile," he said. "Race is a very crude predictor of any sort of differential response to medication." About 8 percent of whites carry a mutation that would cause trouble with warfarin, a blood-thinning drug, compared to 2 or 3 percent of blacks. It's a difference that might be noticeable across populations, but isn't of much use in treating an individual. "I don't think you'd be less vigilant [for side effects] in this case," he added. Last year, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study showing that African Americans with heart failure were less likely than whites to benefit from a type of drug known as an ACE inhibitor. And a Massachusetts company has developed a drug called BiDil -- actually a combination of existing medications -- which it says is designed specifically for black heart patients. But Dr. Alastair J.J. Wood, a pharmacologist at Vanderbilt University, said the variation between members of a race makes it impossible to use race as the basis for tailoring drug therapies. "If Chinese people were, on average, smaller than Caucasians, that doesn't help you in selecting a shirt size for a Chinese man," he observed.
 * Polymorphisms**

One of the ultimate dreams of geneticists and pharmacologists is to someday tailor drug therapies to each patient, an idea called pharmacogenomics. In so doing, each person would receive the drug that is most effective for him and causes the fewest side effects. Racial groupings would be meaningless, because the tailoring would be based on genetic analysis of each individual, not on groups. The prospect of widespread genetic screenings necessary for pharmacogenomics has raised fears that it might lead to widespread genetic discrimination, particularly as some individuals are identified as at risk for a lethal disease. In that regard, they say, genetic discrimination would be like racial discrimination. That analogy doesn't fly with Graves, a member of Howard University's human genome advisory group. "The fact that we're making pills that work for only one group -- now that's genetic discrimination," he said. Individualizing care by using genetic information is one way of reversing that discrimination. Pasted from <[]>
 * Tailoring therapies**

• [|**Genetic Differences**] • [|**Gene Expansion**] • [|**RaceandHistory.com**] • [|**HowComYouCom.com**] || Many indigenous people have always known that the racial categories recognized by society were mostly skin deep and were not the correct way to define people. The more closely researchers examine the human genome (the complement of genetic material encased in the heart of almost every cell of the body) the more most of them are convinced that the standard labels used to distinguish people by "race" have little biological meaning. They say that while it may seem easy to tell at a glance whether a person is Caucasian, African or Asian, the ease dissolves when one probes beneath surface characteristics and scans the genome for DNA hallmarks of "race." As it turns out, scientists say, the human species is so evolutionarily young, and its migratory patterns so wide, restless and rococo, that it has simply not had a chance to divide itself into separate biological groups in any but the most superficial ways. "Race is a social concept, not a scientific one," said Dr. J. Craig Venter, head of the Celera Genomics Corporation in Rockville, Md. "We all evolved in the last 100,000 years from the same small number of tribes that migrated out of Africa and colonized the world." It is timely that scientists are now realizing what many indigenous people and our history have been saying to us. The scientists did not set out to prove the interconnectedness of us humans. They were searching for European greatness; they were searching for products to further exploit the sick, and this allowed for the unearthing of fundamental truths. Dr. Venter and scientists at the National Institutes of Health recently announced that they had put together a draft of the entire sequence of the human genome, and the researchers had unanimously declared, there is only one race -- the human race. Dr. Venter and other researchers say that those traits most commonly used to distinguish one race from another, like skin and eye color, or the width of the nose, are traits controlled by a relatively few number of genes, and thus have been able to change rapidly in response to extreme environmental pressures during the short course of Homo Sapiens history. Equatorial populations evolved dark skin, to protect against ultraviolet radiation, while people in northern latitudes evolved pale skin, in order to produce vitamin D from pale sunlight. About .01 percent of our genes are reflected in our external appearances and because this tiny percent together with the high percentage of ignorance many humans were relegated to enslavement and genocide. Our present popular social structure is based on visual cues, and we have been programmed to recognize them, and to recognize individuals that way. The criteria that people use for race are based entirely on external features that we are programmed to recognize. We were programmed to recognize them because influential Europeans, who unfortunately controlled the spread of misinformation and wars, thought it was vitally important to promote White Supremacy. By contrast with the tiny number of genes that make some people dark-skinned and doe- eyed, and others as pale as napkins, scientists say that traits like intelligence, artistic talent and social skills are likely to be shaped by thousands, if not tens of thousands, of the 80,000 or so genes in the human genome, all working in complex combinations. The possibility of such gene networks shifting their interrelationships wholesale in the course of humanity's brief foray across the globe, and being skewed in significant ways according to "race" is "a bogus idea," said Dr. Aravinda Chakravarti, a geneticist at Case Western University in Cleveland. The differences that we see in skin color do not translate into widespread biological differences that are unique to groups. They more allow us to reflect on the socializing that went along with the development of our differences that enabled us to survive in a given environment. Dr. Jurgen K. Naggert, a geneticist at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Me., said: "These big groups that we characterize as races are too heterogeneous to lump together in a scientific way. If you are doing a DNA study to look for markers for a particular disease, you cannot use 'Caucasians' as a group. They are too diverse. Some may believe that most differences between races are superficial, but the differences are there, and they are informative about the origins and migrations of our species. To appreciate the views and ideas of another group of people, we have to get data from their part of the world, and look at differences within groups and between groups. It helps to have labels for groups. There are fundamental differences among different races that extend to the way groups of people use their brain and perceive the world. People like Dr. J. Philippe Rushton, a psychologist at The University of Western Ontario in Canada and author of "Race, Evolution and Behavior," who hold the belief that the three major races differ genetically in ways that affect average group I.Q. and a race can show a propensity toward criminal behavior, are the most ignorant of all. He asserts that his work reveals East Asians to have the largest average brain size and intelligence scores, those of African descent to have the smallest average brains and I.Q.'s, and those of European ancestry to fall in the middle. Typical European Bigger equals Better mentality. People's I.Q. have to be evaluated in relation to their environment and historical experiences, plus what access they have to information that can enhance their life. What people, whose yardstick for success is material possessions, call enhanced life is a destructive lifestyle to people who use social responsibility and morality as their yardstick for evaluating success. In other words, one's I.Q. has to be relative to one's desires and value system. What some of these scientific fools forget is that women, for example, have smaller brains than men do, even when adjusted for their comparatively smaller body mass, yet the average male and female I.Q. scores are the same by European standards. My evaluation shows that most females are far more intelligent than males. For that matter, fossil evidence suggests that Neanderthals had very sizable brains, and they did not survive as a group. There is no scientific evidence to support substantial differences between groups using the popular European yardstick for evaluating intelligence. However if different groups of people, especially those that are considered the underclass, had access to a certain type of information about themselves then I can assure the scientists that even by their evaluative processes, these people will be seen as far more intelligent. However, ignorance is an equal opportunity affliction. Although research into the structure and sequence of the human genome is in its infancy, geneticists have pieced together a rough outline of human genomic history, called the "Out of Africa" or "Evolutionary Eve" hypothesis to some and fact to intelligent people. By this theory, modern Homo sapiens originated in Africa 200,000 to 100,000 years ago, at which point a relatively small number of them, maybe 10,000 or so, began migrating into the Middle East, Europe, Asia and across the Bering landmass into the Americas. As they traveled, they seem to have completely or largely displaced archaic humans already living in the various continents. At an earlier time, these archaic humans had migrated to these continents from Africa. Since the African emigrations began, a mere 7,000 generations have passed. In addition, because the founding population of immigrants was small, it could only take so much genetic variation with it. Because of that combination, (a limited founder population and a short time since dispersal) humans are strikingly homogeneous, differing from one another only once in a thousand subunits of the genome. "We are a small population grown large in the blink of an eye," Dr. Lander said. "We are a little village that's grown all over the world, and we retain the genetic variation seen in that little village." The human genome is large, though, composed of three billion-odd subunits, or bases, which means that even a tiny percentage of variation from one individual to the next amounts to a sizable number of genetic discrepancies. The question is, where in the genome is that variation found, and how is it distributed among different populations? Through global sampling of neutral genetic markers (stretches of genetic material that do not help create the body's functioning proteins but instead are composed of so-called 'junk DNA') researchers have found that, on average, 88 percent to 90 percent of the differences between people occur within their local populations, while only about 10 percent to 12 percent of the differences distinguish one population, or race, from another. To put it another way, the citizens of any given village in the world, whether in Scotland or Tanzania, hold 90 percent of the genetic variability that humanity has to offer. However, that 90/10 ratio is just an average, and refers only to 'junk-DNA' markers. For the genetic material that encodes proteins, the picture is somewhat more complex. Many workhorse genes responsible for basic organ functions show virtually no variability from individual to individual, which means they are even less "race specific" than are neutral genetic markers. Some genes, notably those of the immune system, show enormous variability, but the variability does not track with racial groupings. Then there are the genes that control pigmentation and other physical features. These also come in a wide assortment of "flavors," but unlike immune-related genes, they are often distributed in population-specific clusters, resulting in Swedes who look far more like other Swedes than they do like Australian Aborigines. A few group differences are more than skin deep. Among the most famous examples are the elevated rates of sickle-cell anemia among African-Americans and of betathalassemia, another hemoglobin disorder, among those of Mediterranean heritage. Both traits evolved to help the ancestors of these groups resist malaria infection, but both prove lethal when inherited in a double dose. As with differences in skin pigmentation, the means to do so was through the alteration of a single gene. Another cause of group differences is the so-called founder effect. In such cases, the high prevalence of an unusual condition in a population can be traced to a founding ancestor who happened to carry a novel mutation into the region. Over many generations of comparative isolation and inbreeding, the community, like it or not, became "enriched" with the founder's disorder. The founder effect explains the high incidence of Huntington's neuro-degenerative disease in the Lake Maracaibo region of Venezuela, and of Tay-Sachs disease among Ashkenazi Jews. Dr. Naggert emphasized that medical geneticists had a much better chance of unearthing these founder effects by scrutinizing small, isolated and well-defined populations, like the northern Finns, the Basques of Spain, or the Amish of Pennsylvania, than they did by going after "races." Dr. Sonia S. Anand, an assistant professor of medicine at McMaster University in Ontario, proposed that clinicians think about ethnicity rather than race when seeking clues to how disease patterns differ from one group to the next. Ethnicity is a broad concept that encompasses both genetics and culture. Thinking about ethnicity is a way to bring together questions of a person's biology, lifestyle and diet. Ethnicity is about phenotype and genotype, and it allows people to look at differences between groups in another way. However, studying the effects of racial labeling is imperative and a prerequisite to correcting the errors of the past. In investigating the reasons behind the high incidence of cardiovascular disease among people from the Indian subcontinent, for example, Dr. Anand discovered that Indians had comparatively elevated amounts of clotting factors in their blood. Beyond tallying up innate traits, she also takes into account how Indian culture and life habits may pose added risks for heart disease. The science of human origins can help to heal the many wounds that pseudo-scientists have inflicted on us. Scientists got us into this problem in the first place, with their measurements of skulls and their emphasis on racial differences and racial classifications. Science can now get us out of it. We need more leaders to promote the evolutionary understanding of our human race. //Abstracts from various scientific articles at Nature .com and news reports.// THE END Pasted from <[]>
 * Race and Genetics**
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