Great questions. See my attempt at answers below -- but this is NOT a
simple issue.
Francis
-----Original Message-----
From: SteamDoc@aol.com [mailto:SteamDoc@aol.com]
Sent: Monday, March 25, 2002 10:23 PM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Francis Collins Online: Race and the Genome
A question to Dr. Collins and any other informed people who might be around:
Some recent stories in the press have stated that one insight from the Human
Genome Project has been that our concept of "race" is pretty meaningless --
that the genetic differences that make up "race" are pretty small in
comparison to all the diversity in the genome. People are saying things
like "race is a social construct, not a scientific one" and suggested that
biomedical research that makes race a big factor is on an unproductive path.
A couple of questions:
1) Do you agree with the statements above?
THINGS THAT WE KNOW ABOUT GENETICS AND RACE
We are all 99.9% identical at the DNA level
*That still leaves millions of differences
*Most of these variants were present in our common ancestors, and thus are
found in all groups -- there is thus more variation within a group than
between different groups.
*But the frequency of alleles can vary between populations, as a result of
-New mutations
-Selection
-Drift
-Founder effects
*Such differences in allele frequencies may be used to make statistical
predictions of geographic origins, but in general there will be considerable
overlap between groups
*The history of human populations is more of a trellis than a tree
*Except in cases of extreme geographic isolation, the boundaries around
population groups will be blurry and imprecise
*
2) Do you see these results as potentially helpful in advancing the
Christian ideal that "there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, etc.,"
and making progress against racism? Or are the people who most need to be
cured of racism the most unlikely to pay heed to such scientific results?
I believe that genetics has a lot to contribute here -- at least science can
say plainly that efforts to draw precise boundaries around certain groups
("them") and differentiate them biologically from some self-centered idea of
"us" are doomed to failure. In fact, a great fraction of what we define as
race or ethnicity is due to social constructs, not biological ones. We are
ALL God's children. But of course those with a prejudicial agenda will be
unlikely to yield it up because of these arguments.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Allan H. Harvey, Boulder, Colorado | SteamDoc@aol.com
"Any opinions expressed here are mine, and should not be
attributed to my employer, my wife, or my cats"
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