The Dangers of Research...

[alfreda89]

There you are, researching when humans figured out that iron was in our blood, and you stumble onto genetic questions about why one population has more occurrences of a genetic condition than others. And you lose the time it takes to read the article. If you're inspired to keep going, oh, the time lost!

There must be an explanation for why hereditary hemochromatosis is 30 times less common in blacks and 11,000 times less common in Asians than in non-Hispanic whites. A founder effect, the relatively young age of the mutation, and other unidentified demographic factors may explain this discrepancy. And perhaps, the allele may have discouraged iron deficiency or disease at a particularly vulnerable time in northern Europe.

The why is so important, as it raises fundamental questions regarding our own future.

Comments

[alfreda89.livejournal.com]

It did refer to that, Judy, and said they are no longer sure that is what was happening. Clearly something was happening--it has too high an incidence in the population, but a narrow population. But is it a byproduct of something happening on a neighboring gene? It may cause a bad reaction to a huge attack on the immune system (how this doctor died) or it might build iron reserves for a settled community not eating enough meat, and so forth. But it is giving them insights to our early evolution.