How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’ • Hacker News Board

Re: How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’

#11

Post by imron » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 2:22 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #4

nukeop wrote: post #2

No matter how much the society at large wants to tiptoe the subject, the concept of race has never fell into disuse wherever facts really matters, such as in healthcare or the legal system.

I don’t understand your examples. How does race affect medical treatment of an individual? Should people be treated differently in the eyes of the law depending on skin color?

People of different races are predisposed to different diseases.

If you see medical care as going beyond just treatment but also inclusive of education and preventative measures, then if you don't factor in race you will be doing a disservice to members of races that are more susceptible to certain diseases.

Re: How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’

#12

Post by montrose » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 2:23 PM UTC

spamizbad wrote: post #8

montrose wrote: post #3

It's interesting to think that an article so reasonable, and so grounded in knowledge, would also get you called names if you posted it on Twitter. Empirically, this field would appear to be the one most likely to yield Galileos in our time. (As in Galileo's case, without any deliberate attempt on their part to be heretics, just by following the truth where their era's zealots don't want it to lead.)

It's reasonable but also kind of.. straw-manny. Outside of a few crazy fringes, nobody is suggesting that its not "Politically Correct" to point out that certain races are carriers for various genetic disorders or disease risk factors. I've never heard of anybody calling someone racist if they said "People with African heritage can be carriers for sickle cell anemia." Likewise, I've never seen anyone called an anti-s…

I think the strangeness may come from the fact that the author is thinking of things that genetic research either has discovered or will discover that would be more controversial, but he's being careful not to actually mention any of them.

Re: How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’

#13

Post by nukeop » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 2:30 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #4

nukeop wrote: post #2

No matter how much the society at large wants to tiptoe the subject, the concept of race has never fell into disuse wherever facts really matters, such as in healthcare or the legal system.

I don’t understand your examples. How does race affect medical treatment of an individual? Should people be treated differently in the eyes of the law depending on skin color?

People of different races have different metabolisms and physical characteristics, making them more susceptible to some illnesses but not others, and respond to different medicines differently. This is also important when considering the impact of biology on forensic methods in legal system. Race is also a good predictor of other factors.

Re: How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’

#14

Post by spamizbad » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 2:33 PM UTC

montrose wrote: post #12

spamizbad wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's reasonable but also kind of.. straw-manny. Outside of a few crazy fringes, nobody is suggesting that its not "Politically Correct" to point out that certain races are carriers for various genetic disorders or disease risk factors. I've never heard of anybody calling someone racist if they said "People with African heritage can be carriers for sickle cell anemia." Likewise, I've never seen anyone called an anti-s…

I think the strangeness may come from the fact that the author is thinking of things that genetic research either has discovered or will discover that would be more controversial, but he's being careful not to actually mention any of them.

Perhaps, but so far modern scientific discoveries have been fairly devastating towards the various hypotheses of "scientific racism." Just recently it's gotten to the point where some white supremacists are convinced the field if genetics is a Jewish conspiracy because they got their genes tested and... surprise... they're 5% non-white.

Re: How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’

#15

Post by nostalgeek » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 2:34 PM UTC

throwaway538 wrote: post #9

pavlov wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand your examples. How does race affect medical treatment of an individual? Should people be treated differently in the eyes of the law depending on skin color?

Different disease prevalence. Different response to drugs. Jews for example more likely to have Tay Sachs disease. Sickle cell disease affects blacks disproportionately.

> Jews for example more likely to have Tay Sachs disease.

Sure but it's not because they practice Judaism. And since one can convert to judaism, I've never heard about someone who can convert his genes to "jew genes".

> Sickle cell disease affects blacks disproportionately.

Sure but it isn't necessary because their skin are dark, when you can find people from Sri Lanka or India who have a skin blacker than African people yet they don't have this disease prevalence.

See what you are doing here? you are mixing up genetics which can be used to establish statistical facts about gene expressions, and semantics AKA social construct. And this sort of sophism can easily be exploited to make broad generalizations about the behavior of arbitrary racial groups you've established under pretense of science. That's why the notion of race for humans is completely absurd.

What race are people living in Madagascar? most of them aren't negro looking, what race the Yemeni? the afghans? they don't look like Arabs...

Re: How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’

#16

Post by JohnStrangeII » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 2:37 PM UTC

montrose wrote: post #3

It's interesting to think that an article so reasonable, and so grounded in knowledge, would also get you called names if you posted it on Twitter. Empirically, this field would appear to be the one most likely to yield Galileos in our time. (As in Galileo's case, without any deliberate attempt on their part to be heretics, just by following the truth where their era's zealots don't want it to lead.)

While I agree with many things the authors says in this essay, the article unfortunately has an 'apologistic touch', so to say. The author starts by casually mentioning that six million jews were killed in the name of an ill-conceived and scientifically unsubstantiated race ideology, and then quickly turns to genetic issues and how they support certain differences in isolated populations. The problem with this way of laying things out is that it does not do justice to the often horrific ways 'race' and even well-justified, measurable differences between populations are handled in society.

The word 'race' should not be used by anyone in any context any longer, because it has been misunderstood, ill-defined and systematically abused over and over. It would be irresponsible to attempt to reappropriate the term into scientific usage.

Apart from that, differences in genetic populations exists just as differences in cultures exist, and I don't think anyone has ever denied that. Researchers need to be aware, though, that there is a bunch of bad human beings out there who will invariably draw the wrong conclusions from such research and advocate policies that are plain evil.

Re: How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’

#17

Post by nostalgeek » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 2:38 PM UTC

nukeop wrote: post #13

pavlov wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand your examples. How does race affect medical treatment of an individual? Should people be treated differently in the eyes of the law depending on skin color?

People of different races have different metabolisms and physical characteristics, making them more susceptible to some illnesses but not others, and respond to different medicines differently. This is also important when considering the impact of biology on forensic methods in legal system. Race is also a good predictor of other factors.

> People of different races have different metabolisms and physical characteristics

how many human races? if you're going to talk about categories of humans you need to precisely define them. So how many human races known exactly?

Re: How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’

#18

Post by nukeop » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 2:42 PM UTC

nostalgeek wrote: post #15

throwaway538 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different disease prevalence. Different response to drugs. Jews for example more likely to have Tay Sachs disease. Sickle cell disease affects blacks disproportionately.

> Jews for example more likely to have Tay Sachs disease. Sure but it's not because they practice Judaism. And since one can convert to judaism, I've never heard about someone who can convert his genes to "jew genes". > Sickle cell disease affects blacks disproportionately. Sure but it isn't necessary because their skin are dark, when you can find people from Sri Lanka or India who have a skin blacker than African pe…

Judaism is not a race, being black means more than just a different skin color, you're intentionally trying to derail the discussion.

Re: How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’

#19

Post by throwaway538 » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 2:43 PM UTC

ak_yo wrote: post #7

This is an interesting argument but I think it fails to coherently restate what it means for race to be socially constructed. Nobody is denying that genetic differences between people exist and are important for health. They’re saying that reusing racial categorization schemes in genetics is scientifically ungrounded because these racial categories have no inherent biological content— they’re more like receptacles fo…

This is because phenotype is a good predictor of genotype and people are good at assessing someone's phenotype very quickly.

I can usually tell roughly which European country someone is from by looking at their face.

It doesn't work as well with different parts of Eastern Europe but you get the idea.

Re: How Genetics Is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race’

#20

Post by JohnStrangeII » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 2:45 PM UTC

imron wrote: post #11

pavlov wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand your examples. How does race affect medical treatment of an individual? Should people be treated differently in the eyes of the law depending on skin color?

People of different races are predisposed to different diseases. If you see medical care as going beyond just treatment but also inclusive of education and preventative measures, then if you don't factor in race you will be doing a disservice to members of races that are more susceptible to certain diseases.

There are no "members of races", there are different genetic indicators that can be clustered and ordered in different ways. Surely if someone has a (measured) propensity towards a certain disease might have to be tested earlier or treated slightly differently.

A doctor's subjective perception of phenotypical 'race' is not the right diagnostic tool. Questions about ancestors and diseases in the family can very well be, if they are supported by statistical evidence.