Preferences

olddustytrail parent
Not really. Races don't exist biologically. There are certainly traits within populations but that's a bit like my cousins tend to be fatter than my family. It's not something that can be accurately targeted.

asdff
You'd be surprised. There is quite a bit of polymorphism within the human species that is very much distinguishable per population. E.g. haplogroup analysis or microsatellite analysis is remarkably accurate in this regard due to a lack of interaction between far flung populations until quite recently in human history. Now, does this imply all the bullshit eugenicists and other racists tend to preach about with race? Hell no, social factors are responsible for most of that variance, but to suggest there would be no biomarker for "race" in its colloquial definition as proxy for population of origin is inaccurate.

This is also why there is a big focus now to seek out underrepresented populations in genetic analysis, because there may be population specific biomarkers that are relevant in disease that you miss if you limit yourself to the handful of widely sequenced homogeneous populations (e.g. there are Utah and Iceland datasets that are popular to use for this).

darkwater
Not an expert but I don't think that still qualifies as biological differences in races. I mean, obviously we are all biological different and it seems obvious as well that if a group of people stays isolated enough it will develop and reinforce differences to other groups.

For example the Basque population has clear genetic differences to the rest of the Iberian and Westerner population [1] but that doesn't make them a different race.

Race is just a social construct, mostly based on visual traits.

[1] https://www.ibe.upf-csic.es/news/-/asset_publisher/PXTgqZXxl...

lanstin
What there isn't is a small number of distinct subgroups that are more related to each other than to the other subgroups.
djrj477dhsnv
Sure there are. An easy example is Australian aboriginals. They were geographically isolated for tens of thousands of years. Their subgroups are more related to each other than to other subgroups.
asdff
There is, due to the way humans migrated and geographically isolated themselves over human history where founder effect, genetic drift, and evidence for introgression (both within our species and from hybridization with other species of hominids) is easily appreciated among populations even today.
lanstin
http://www.stat.yale.edu/~jtc5/papers/CommonAncestors/Nature...

Strong statistical signals but no sharp lines between groups - we as a species like travel and sex.

Depends on the group. Oldie but goodie (1). Salient quote: "The Mormon gene frequencies are similar to those of their northern European ancestors. This is explained by the large founding size of the Mormon population and high rates of gene flow. In contrast, the religious isolates (Amish, Hutterites, and Mennonites) show marked divergence from their ancestral populations and each other, due to isolation and random genetic drift. "

1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1684477/

UberFly
"Races don't exist biologically"

This being your first sentence doesn't warrant continued reading.

anonymous_sorry
The historical conception of race doesn't translate simply to human genetics.

There is more genetic variation within a what we might call a race than between them. And it's interesting to note that the genetic diversity of Eurasian populations is in large part contained within the much greater diversity of Africa. In some sense we're all Africans. On top of that there has been a good amount of mixing, both historically and in the present day.

To think in terms of "races" might lead one to hold a mental model of impermeable boundaries between populations that in many cases were never present, and certainly aren't today. Geneticists tend to use the word "population" instead, since it doesn't connote any unhelpful assumptions about uniform or fixed phenotypes within a well-defined species subgroup.

Of course there are certain obvious environmental adaptations that have been selected for in different geographies/climates, as well random genetic drift between distant populations. Sometimes those difference might have medical relevance, and you can make statistical generalisations about the prevalence and distribution of genetic markers within any group you like. But for most medical and public policy applications it is likely most useful to focus on populations within an administrative area, and increasingly, individualised medicine.

aurizon
Humans are animals, adaptable animals. We have seen how pigment faded when people moved out of Africa and the energy cost of melanin was saved as men lost melanin to allow Vitamin D internal synthesis, and as they went to Asia they regained melanin in the South-East and even changed to another pigment in China etc - might be dual pigments. Hot climates often had ample food = over-population and competition for food = war and internecine conflict for resources and people optimised for combat. As you went North food became seasonal and people starved at time = crops/storage = less fighting = Eskimos are non combative against people, but their enemy was the climate = they learned to combat that quite intelligently with tooth/bone/sinew - also animals are high calory food, but deficiencies can lead to 'rabbit starvation' can occur, but in Eskimos was abated by fat from seals etc. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rabbit_starvation So we are like cats/dogs/hamsters and the same for birds = hundreds of chicken variants. We are just meat in varied shapes/minds I recall an SF book by Jack Vance called 'Dragon Masters' where there were 2 habitable planets, one with Earth men and one with smart lizards and every few thousand years they would pass nearby and the higher tech lizards with space ships would raid the 'Earth' for slaves/plunder and would also lose some lizards to Earth capture. In the long period between orbital intersections, each side would breed their captured slaves into combat beasts of varied types. The lizards bred variants from massive Gorilla types to medium and smaller warrior variants, much like we bred cats/etc. The lizards also bred Juggers, Fiend, Blue Horror, and Murderers - all optimised for combat role against the other race. Vance created many highly creative novels, many with race variants as well as species on various planets. Often they had devolved from fallen interplanetary societies, near savagery, in a complex web of interspecies trade/conflict after the ancient fall when space travel was lost. SF in those days differed a lot from now. Even so, I found Vance's novels fascinating as a teenager. He is long gone, but not forgotten but his novels live on as e-books/audio books and are worth reading.
If there was ever a race targeting disease they will exist by definition. Those it inaccurately targets are just not pure-blooded enough.

This item has no comments currently.