The Emperor

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The Emperors New Clothes Biomedical Research
and the Social Construction of Race Summer
Public Health Videoconference on Minority Health,
June 18th 2002.

• Dr. Joseph L. Graves, Jr.
• Professor of Evolutionary Biology
• Fellow, American Association for the Advancement
  of Science
• Dept. of Life Sciences, ASU-West

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(No Transcript)
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Even eminent scientists are still confused on
this issue.

• Because of this mixing, many anthropologists
  argue, quite reasonably that there is no
  scientific justification for applying the word
  race to human beings. But the concept itself
  is unambiguous, and I believe that the word has a
  clear meaning to most people. The difficulty is
  not with the concept, but with the realization
  that major human races are not pure races.
  James Crow, Daedalus, Winter 2002, pg. 84.

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For a fuller treatment see

• J.L. Graves, Chapter 11, The Race Disease
  Fallacy in The Emperors New Clothes Biological
  Theories of Race at the Millennium, Rutgers
  University Press, 2001.

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Differential mortality between socially
constructed races have been a consistent feature
of American life.

• Do Negroes Recover from Phithisis? Journal of
  the American Medical Association 40 (22) (May 20,
  1903) 1520. 
• The information was requested from physicians
  residing in the South who had considerable
  numbers of cases of pulmonary tuberculosis among
  the African race, if they knew any who recovered
  
• Responses appeared in June 13, 1903 issue Volume
  40 (24), pages 10611662.

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Race Disease differentials 2

• Dr. E. A. Cobleigh of Chattanooga, Tennessee
  writes that he doesnt recall a single case to
  recover. He writes that when a negro becomes
  visibly affected with pulmonary phithisis his
  doom is already practically sealed.
• Dr. E. D. Bondurant of Mobile, Alabama writes
  that the mortality is greater in the black race
  than in the white race and that the disease runs
  a more rapidly fatal course in blacks.

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African-American doubled Euro-American mortality
in the 20th century.

• Age specific mortalities from 24 biological
  sources of disease.
• Blacks and whites contrasted for 1963, 1980,
  1996.
• This pattern is not consistent with a genetic
  explanation.

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Confused research programs

• The pressing question is why have these
  mortality differentials persisted across modern
  times?
• The biomedical research establishment has
  unjustifiably focused on simple genetic
  explanations.
• Notable examples are the Tuskegee Syphilis
  Experiment and Pellagra.

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Pellagra, forgotten killer of American children

• Charles P. Davenport and the Eugenics Record
  Office of Cold Spring Harbor.
• The ERO disputed Joseph Goldbergers
  demonstration that Pellagra is a vitamin
  deficiency disease.
• From 1916 to 1941, 75,000 people would die, 55
  of them, non-white children.

Black pedigree from the ERO
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Confused research paradigms 2

• The National Cancer Institute and the National
  Institute of Aging currently utilize the term
  special populations.
• Special populations includes minorities, women,
  and the disabled.
• What is biologically special about these groups??

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Confused Definitions and Research programs 3

• No biologically defined races exist within the
  human species.
• This recognition goes back to Charles Darwin in
  The Descent of Man, 1871.
• Biological races are properly defined as
  subspecies.

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Sufficient criteria for race

• There must be a sufficient amount of genetic
  distance, consist with that of subspecies rank.
• Or the populations must have been maintained as
  unique evolutionary lineages

New York Times, July 17, 1950
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Population subdivision statistics are
inconsistent with the use of race in humans.

• Human populations have considerable genetic
  overlap across the genome -- They have also
  maintained relatively high levels of gene flow
  throughout history, Wrights FST 0.156.

Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi, and Piazza 1994, data
from Templeton (1998, 2002.)
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Estimate of gene flow between human
subpopulations

• Wrights Fst for human data 0.156
• We can calculate the effective population size
  and the migration rate for humans by the
  equation
• Fst 1/(4Nm 1)
• Thus Nm 1.35
• Thus modern human genetic diversity can be
  explained by the long term average of 1.35
  individuals per 25 years, or 13.5 per 250 years,
  or 135 per 2,500 years.
• Thus sporadic movements that over long periods of
  time that average out to these values could
  easily explain human genetic diversity.

Fig. 2.15.1, Cavalli-Sfroza, Menozzi, and Piazza
1994.
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Criteria for race Unique lineages?

• All human genetic distance data sets that have
  been tested fail to fit tree-ness.
• Bowcock et al., 1991 Cavalli-Sfroza et al. 1996
  Nei and Roychoudhury 1974, 1982 Templeton 1998.

Fig. 2.2A, Templeton 2002