Caucasian???


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Orfamay Quest wrote:
Kazuka wrote:


Also, how can they make a racial determination about bone structure unless they've assigned certain bone structures to certain races?

This online quiz assigns people to houses at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry based on their personality traits.

By your line of reasoning, the existence of this test proves that Hogwarts and its houses exist.

And thanks to the wonderful world of the modern internet, Hogwarts actually does exist.

Not the funniest of my options, but it amused me enough.

Take a look at my reply to Hitdice. In this case, not only does Hogwarts exist, but one of the faculty is campaigning for it to be shut down while talking about some of the classes and teaching strategies.


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Orfamay Quest wrote:
Kazuka wrote:
thejeff wrote:
I'd actually love to see a kind of cladistic human family tree. I poked around a bit, but didn't come across anything.

I'd love to see such a family tree too.

I think the only reason they haven't made one is they're still trying to nail down the origins of some groups.

No, it's more fundamental than that. How can you make a cladistic tree when the stuff you're clustering does not form clades?

Bacteria, in general, form clades; one bacterium splits into two bacteria and so two different bacteria will either have the same parent or different parents. Bacterial genes, by contrast, transfer between individuals bacteria and so an individual bacterium might have genes from twenty different bacteria, including different species.

Languages, by convention, are also cladistic; English "came from" West Germanic, and merely borrowed from French.

So we can divide languages very cleanly, for example, into languages descended from Germanic and languages descended from Latin, and there's no overlap between the two.

People are not cladistic. I have two parents, and I share only one of them with my half-brother. So we can't divide people neatly into "people descended from person X" and "people descended from person Y"; some people might fit into two categories.

There's actually a very powerful theorem for population genetics. After a long enough time, you will either be an ancestor of all living humans, or of none of them, but not of "some of them." Because of this, we can sort species into clades as well; all birds are descended from dinosaurs, all ostriches are descended from proto-raitites, no sparrows are descended from proto-raitites.

But we literally can't do that with humans. Some humans are descended from some other humans, and some humans aren't descended from other humans, and some humans are more closely descended from other humans than still other humans.

That's also the problem with tying...

Yeah, I get it. It's more complicated than a simple cladistic tree would show. There are crosses and mixtures.

On the other hand, especially before easy travel in the modern era, populations of humans come fairly close. We can track which populations descend from other populations and whether it's solely from that population or with input from another.

In theory, I agree. Humans are a clade and there are, strictly speaking, no meaningful clades within the group. Which is why I said a "kind of cladistic tree". Which I still want to see.


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Orfamay Quest wrote:
Hitdice wrote:
Orf, do you think it's possible to recognize that race is a social construct rather a heritable trait, but still think it's "real?" 'Cause that's sort of where I am at this point.

Well, social constructs are definitely real in some sense. If I try to practice medicine without a license, I'm really going to a real jail, but the license itself is entirely a social construct. A whole bunch of people sat down and agreed upon a set of hoops that a person has to jump through in order to be licensed, not all of which are related to the actual practice of medicine.

Similarly, the actual social construct of medical licensure varies from person to person and from place to place; I might be licensed in Alabama but not in Mississippi, because the social group we call Alabama has constructed it differently. And Missiissippi may or may not allow me to practice with an Alabama license, and whether or not I am allowed to practice may also vary with the (socially constructed) circumstances -- for example, someone is hit by a car, I may be allowed to provide emergency treatment while waiting for the ambulance to arrive, when I'd not be allowed open a clinic.

But even beyond social constructs having effects in and of themselves, the concept of races maps, very imperfectly, onto a real thing. There are real populations that can be distinguished by various markers. There's overlap and fuzziness, but there is also something real there that we're not just making up.


no one taught me how to turn sunlight into vitamin d. It just comes naturally.


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*shrug* All that really matters is that someone has thoughts feelings and wants. After that genetics is irrelevant.


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BigNorseWolf wrote:
*shrug* All that really matters is that someone has thoughts feelings and wants. After that genetics is irrelevant.

Until they die of some disease that wasn't treated properly because their genetics were different from the normally studied population.

Sure. On the moral level, you're right. People are people and we shouldn't treat them worse (or better) based on their genetics.


thejeff wrote:
BigNorseWolf wrote:
*shrug* All that really matters is that someone has thoughts feelings and wants. After that genetics is irrelevant.
Until they die of some disease that wasn't treated properly because their genetics were different from the normally studied population.

If you're treating people differently based on their "race," you're still treating people improperly.

Intragroup variation is greater than intergroup variation.

To use an oversimplified example -- yes, sex is real. So is height. And so is a relationship between height and sex -- men are taller. But if you use this factoid and direct your clothing company to make all men's clothes the same size and larger than the size of your women's clothing, most of your customers will still be wearing the wrong size (you'll be fitting them improperly). Because the variation within the groups is greater than the variation between the groups.

If you want to do proper medical treatment, you treat them based on how they present as individuals, and you shouldn't assume that just because there's an association between a specific gene and a "race," that it's present in all, or even most, people who present as that race. Because the variation within groups is greater than the variation between the groups.

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But even beyond social constructs having effects in and of themselves, the concept of races maps, very imperfectly, onto a real thing. There are real populations that can be distinguished by various markers.

The first sentence doesn't follow from the second. If I were to take a large sample of people, I could find genetic markers that distinguished Aries from Taurus from Leo. In fact, if I look at twenty different genes, one of them is likely to be significant at the 5% level. That's just data (over)fitting.

Furthermore, since genes persist, I could study that same group of people ten years hence and get a very similar finding. Voila, the study is replicable.

That's basically what's going on with the studies you (and Kazuka) are referring to. You pick a badly defined group, look at a whole bunch of characteristics, and voila, you'll find some significant differences. Further more, since the social group is real, and because assortative mating is also real, the genetic traits will persist in future generations. (We would see the same thing if there were a widespread belief that Taurus men should only marry Taurus women.)

That does not, however, reify the social construction.

And you can see that from the map posted earlier. There are no "races" in that map, but a collection of assorted blobs that don't actually correspond very well at all to any particular social constructions. You'll also notice, that within-group variation (especially in Africa) totally dominates any kind of between-group variation, suggesting that knowing that someone is "black" doesn't actually tell you anything useful about their Y-DNA. And if you read the footnotes, "only dominant (highest %) or notable haplogroups are shown," meaning that even the blobs are largely fictitous; they may represent only 20% or fewer of the individuals in an area. AND it's based on a study of only one chromosome, and the picture would look entirely different if it were based on mDNA.


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Orfamay Quest wrote:
thejeff wrote:
BigNorseWolf wrote:
*shrug* All that really matters is that someone has thoughts feelings and wants. After that genetics is irrelevant.
Until they die of some disease that wasn't treated properly because their genetics were different from the normally studied population.

If you're treating people differently based on their "race," you're still treating people improperly.

Intragroup variation is greater than intergroup variation.

To use an oversimplified example -- yes, sex is real. So is height. And so is a relationship between height and sex -- men are taller. But if you use this factoid and direct your clothing company to make all men's clothes the same size and larger than the size of your women's clothing, most of your customers will still be wearing the wrong size (you'll be fitting them improperly). Because the variation within the groups is greater than the variation between the groups.

If you want to do proper medical treatment, you treat them based on how they present as individuals, and you shouldn't assume that just because there's an association between a specific gene and a "race," that it's present in all, or even most, people who present as that race. Because the variation within groups is greater than the variation between the groups.

Yes. You shouldn't just look at race. Duh. You should consider the individual case. Duh.

But still, there are conditions that are far more prevalent in some populations than in others. When you're trying to figure out what's wrong, that's worth considering.
And when you're doing research you shouldn't assume that your locally derived sample of subjects actually covers the world's population.

To use your height & sex analogy, you also shouldn't ignore the sex difference and base the proportions of the various sizes you make only on men (or only on women, if you prefer). Either will distort the actual demand. Even though variation within the groups is greater than the variation between the groups.


Orfamay Quest wrote:
That's basically what's going on with the studies you (and Kazuka) are referring to. You pick a badly defined group, look at a whole bunch of characteristics, and voila, you'll find some significant differences. Further more, since the social group is real, and because assortative mating is also real, the genetic traits will persist in future generations. (We would see the same thing if there were a widespread belief that Taurus men should only marry Taurus women.)

So your argument is that decades of established science are wrong just because you don't like a term they're using and the assumptions you make based off that term.

It doesn't change what the studies themselves have found. That, within a particular group of African descent, certain risks are higher than in other groups of African descent. Just like tall people are at higher risk of certain diseases and health complications than short people are. Or how heart attacks typically present differently in men and women.

No matter how we look at it, there's always going to be certain characteristics that carry a tendency towards certain results. While individual variation does factor in, it's still variation from that baseline set of chances. It doesn't mean everyone in the group will get a certain disease, but it does mean that people within one group are far more likely to get it than the other and should be cautioned to take extra precautions. Like how men are less likely to certain cancers than women are.

Everything about your body affects your health. All of it must be considered. What chromosomes were you born with? How tall are you? How much do you weight? How is your body's ability to handle that weight? How is your bone structure? What sex were born as? What mutations were you born with? What is your skin pigmentation? What alleles were you born with? What is your hair pigmentation? All of these can have an effect on your health. But at the same time, all of the health chances doctors caution about are from studying other people with those traits. A truly unique person would be medical mystery.

Race, sex, height... all of these are useful trait groupings within medicine to allow for disease risk management. And all of these have an effect. Medical science is based off, in part, accepting the horrible reality that nature doesn't care what our sensibilities are; if it decides you're going to go insane just because people with your hair color have a tendency to go insane, then just because that is considered hair colorist to state doesn't help the fact you're now dancing in your underwear on the freeway while ranting about telephone poles stealing your thoughts.

So, yes, from a medical science standpoint, we do sometimes have to treat people differently because of the color of their skin... because someone with one skin pigmentation may have a lot less risk of certain diseases than someone with another skin pigmentation. And going on about equality and social constructs does not change that medical fact.


Kazuka wrote:


So your argument is that decades of established science are wrong just because you don't like a term they're using and the assumptions you make based off that term.

No, my argument is that decades of established science are wrong because they haven't established that they're actually looking at something that exist.

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It doesn't change what the studies themselves have found. That, within a particular group of African descent, certain risks are higher than in other groups of African descent.

But that's not race. That is "particular groups of African descent."

Descent is real, and so (of course) is Africa. But when you lump two groups of African descent together and call them something, whether you all Just like tall people are at higher risk of certain diseases and health complications than short people are. Or how heart attacks typically present differently in men and women.

Even-toed ungluates (artiodactyls) are real. Crabs are real. Whales are real. But if you're going to claim that (artiodactyls + whales) are a real group, you're going to need to show more than that. As it happens, this has been studied, and there's a lot of genetic evidence suggesting that this particular group does show a clade, because this group shows more internal similarities among each other, similarities that are themselves different from other types of animals and even other types of mammals. [In fact, (hippos + whales) are an actual clade that excludes camels.]

I can't make that kind of argument about (crabs + whales); the within-group differences (e.g. whales have endoskeleons, whales are warm-blooded) totally dominate the between-group differences between whales and hippos, or even whales and camels, or even whales and chimps.

For "race" to make sense, you need to be able to make a similar argument -- it's not enough to say "look, here's an actual group of people, and they're different from this other group of people, therefore that's a racial difference." You can't simply lump two groups of African-descended people together and call them "black," or "African," or Negroid" when there's nothing to suggest that those two groups of African people have any more in common with each other than they do with the Japanese Ainu.


thejeff wrote:


But still, there are conditions that are far more prevalent in some populations than in others.

But "Negroid" isn't a population, any more than "Aries" is.


Orfamay Quest wrote:
Kazuka wrote:


So your argument is that decades of established science are wrong just because you don't like a term they're using and the assumptions you make based off that term.
No, my argument is that decades of established science are wrong because they haven't established that they're actually looking at something that exist.

But, basically, you're still arguing that you know better than most scientists do and that the science is wrong because of your judgement.

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It doesn't change what the studies themselves have found. That, within a particular group of African descent, certain risks are higher than in other groups of African descent.

But that's not race. That is "particular groups of African descent."

Descent is real, and so (of course) is Africa. But when you lump two groups of African descent together and call them something, whether you all

Why isn't it a race? Why can't the particular genetic traits that separate one group of Africans from the rest make them a race? Why can't "African" be a racial group instead of a singular race?

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Just like tall people are at higher risk of certain diseases and health complications than short people are. Or how heart attacks typically present differently in men and women.

Even-toed ungluates (artiodactyls) are real. Crabs are real. Whales are real. But if you're going to claim that (artiodactyls + whales) are a real group, you're going to need to show more than that. As it happens, this has been studied, and there's a lot of genetic evidence suggesting that this particular group does show a clade, because this group shows more internal similarities among each other, similarities that are themselves different from other types of animals and even other types of mammals. [In fact, (hippos + whales) are an actual clade that excludes camels.]

I can't make that kind of argument about (crabs + whales); the within-group differences (e.g. whales have endoskeleons, whales are warm-blooded) totally dominate the between-group differences between whales and hippos, or even whales and camels, or even whales and chimps.

For "race" to make sense, you need to be able to make a similar argument -- it's not enough to say "look, here's an actual group of people, and they're different from this other group of people, therefore that's a racial difference." You can't simply lump two groups of African-descended people together and call them "black," or "African," or Negroid" when there's nothing to suggest that those two groups of African people have any more in common with each other than they do with the Japanese Ainu.

That's where genetics comes in. You can study them and the particular alleles they tend to present and separate them into races based on number of alleles in common. Which... is actually how it's currently being done and why it is that, from a genetic standpoint, there is no singular African race. It's why it is West Africans are considered genetically different from other African groups. West Africans also tend to have higher tendencies for certain diseases than other African groups (particularly sickle-cell), so this shows that this type of racial identification is actually useful.

But you still use racial groups for things that would commonly affect the entire racial group. Like, let's say there's a fungus that attacks people based on melanin content. Caucasians would be the least affected racial group, while Africans would be the most affected. This is a case where racial groups are useful when what matters are physical traits that are commonly shared, but are not based on differences within genetic code.


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Orfamay Quest wrote:
Kazuka wrote:


It doesn't change what the studies themselves have found. That, within a particular group of African descent, certain risks are higher than in other groups of African descent.

But that's not race. That is "particular groups of African descent."

Descent is real, and so (of course) is Africa. But when you lump two groups of African descent together and call them something, whether you all Just like tall people are at higher risk of certain diseases and health complications than short people are. Or how heart attacks typically present differently in men and women.

Even-toed ungluates (artiodactyls) are real. Crabs are real. Whales are real. But if you're going to claim that (artiodactyls + whales) are a real group, you're going to need to show more than that. As it happens, this has been studied, and there's a lot of genetic evidence suggesting that this particular group does show a clade, because this group shows more internal similarities among each other, similarities that are themselves different from other types of animals and even other types of mammals. [In fact, (hippos + whales) are an actual clade that excludes camels.]

I can't make that kind of argument about (crabs + whales); the within-group differences (e.g. whales have endoskeleons, whales are warm-blooded) totally dominate the between-group differences between whales and hippos, or even whales and camels, or even whales and chimps.

For "race" to make sense, you need to be able to make a similar argument -- it's not enough to say "look, here's an actual group of people, and they're different from this other group of people, therefore that's a racial difference." You can't simply lump two groups of African-descended people together and call them "black," or "African," or Negroid" when there's nothing to suggest that those two groups of African people have any more in common with each other than they do with the Japanese Ainu.

The fact that they are not completely different clades, admitting no interbreeding or other fuzziness, doesn't mean you can't group populations in useful ways. We do actually have decent ideas of the ancestry and relationships of various different groups of humans.

We know, for example, the basic division among Africans and from that we can pretty easily determine if any given two groups are closer to each other than to Japanese Ainu. As I said earlier, there are several distinct genetic groups in Africa, one of which is ancestral to the rest of the world's population. (From that linked Map Y-DNA Adam -> A B DE C F, F->everything else.) If your African groups are within any one of those basic division except F, they're closer to each other than to the Ainu.

Now, I'll agree that the common idea of "black" or "Negroid" as anyone with black skin is not particularly useful. If nothing else it would include native Australians and Melanesians who aren't closer to any African population than any other non-African group. Still, that doesn't mean that the concept of race is completely useless. It just needs to be better defined. As we have done.

As a side, but somewhat related note on your strict use of clades. I assume you don't agree with the separation of dogs, wolves and coyotes into separate clades? Since they have all interbred (and still do).


Kazuka wrote:


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It doesn't change what the studies themselves have found. That, within a particular group of African descent, certain risks are higher than in other groups of African descent.

But that's not race. That is "particular groups of African descent."

Descent is real, and so (of course) is Africa. But when you lump two groups of African descent together and call them something, whether you all

Why isn't it a race?

Because it doesn't fit the historical use of the term "race"; if you go this route, you don't end up with three (or five) convenience "races" that can fit on a census form, but with dozens, and no obvious way to distinguish them from each other without a genetic scan.

Basically, we already have a term for what you suggest -- note the use of the word "haplotype" in the map already presented.

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Why can't the particular genetic traits that separate one group of Africans from the rest make them a race?

Same answer. If you want to call a specific haplotype a "race," you're abusing the term -- and, again, "African" is no longer a race, nor is "Caucasian."

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Why can't "African" be a racial group instead of a singular race?

Because the various African haplotypes don't hang together as a group. Hippos and whales together are a group; whales and crabs are not, despite the fact that they may share traits (like living in the ocean) that distinguish them from hippos.

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That's where genetics comes in. You can study them and the particular alleles they tend to present and separate them into races based on number of alleles in common. Which... is actually how it's currently being done and why it is that, from a genetic standpoint, there is no singular African race.

But that's exactly my point. There is no singular African race, because the genetics don't cluster along the African/non-African dimension. There is also no singular Asian race, because the genetics don't cluster along that division. There is no singular white/Caucasian race, because.... well, you should be ahead of me at this point.

Genetic clustering is relatively easy. But when you look at the clusters, they look nothing at all like the social construct people describe with the term "race."


Kazuka wrote:


But, basically, you're still arguing that you know better than most scientists do and that the science is wrong because of your judgement.

No, actually, I'm arguing that this is what mainstream scientists say and that you're misunderstanding those scientists (badly).


Intragroup variation being greater than intergroup variation is not even a relevant observation. If you are looking for the tallest people in the world, it means exactly nothing how much variation there is in height among women, at least 990 of the 1000 tallest people around will be men.

More generally: Assume two populations. Among one population, trait X varies between 0 and 40, among the other the trait is between 30 and 70. Let's cut off the tails of the statistical variation, so this is +/- 2 SD in each group. The intergroup difference will be 30. The intragroup range is 40 in both groups.

...and yet, everyone above 40 in trait X is going to be the second group. A pretty large majority among both groups will be possible to identify by group just by looking at trait X.

Why does the size of inter/intragroup variability matter at all? Is that relationship really the one that matters?


thejeff wrote:
We know, for example, the basic division among Africans and from that we can pretty easily determine if any given two groups are closer to each other than to Japanese Ainu. As I said earlier, there are several distinct genetic groups in Africa, one of which is ancestral to the rest of the world's population. (From that linked Map Y-DNA Adam -> A B DE C F, F->everything else.) If your African groups are within any one of those basic division except F, they're closer to each other than to the Ainu.

Yes. But there's a much higher than chance probability that they're not both within any one of those basic divisions, because variation within groups is much greater than variation between groups.

Which is to say, show me a "black" person, or even an "African," and there's no reason to believe he's more closely related, genetically, to any "African" than he is to an Ainu.

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Now, I'll agree that the common idea of "black" or "Negroid" as anyone with black skin is not particularly useful.

But the slightly less common idea of "African" isn't much better, given the degree of genetic variation within actual African people. Remember, that map is based on a single chromosome; just because two people are both within Y-DNA haplotype C says little or nothing about their mDNA, since that's inherited entirely independently. So you end up with an oversimplified map based on only a single type of variation, and you still can't point to a specific haplotype and say "this means `white'"

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As a side, but somewhat related note on your strict use of clades. I assume you don't agree with the separation of dogs, wolves and coyotes into separate clades? Since they have all interbred (and still do).

As you noted, I'm a pretty strict cladist. In general, dogs are pretty reproductively isolated from both wolves and coyotes, in part because people are pretty good about protecting their dogs, and in part because we're running out of wolves and coyotes for them to breed with.

So technically wolves and dogs are not separate clades (since I can, in fact, find wolf-dog hybrids), but the most recent evidence I've seen suggests that they are generally isolated enough that they can be treated as separate clades within a single supergroup.

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Regarding the geographic origin of dogs, we find that, surprisingly, none of the extant wolf lineages from putative domestication centers is more closely related to dogs, and, instead, the sampled wolves form a sister monophyletic clade.

(I should note that the "sampled wolves" as well as sample dogs were taken from all over the world; the Croatian wolf was more closely related to the Chinese wolf than it was to the (German) Boxer.

This illustrates the problem with human races. In this paper, Freedman et al/ were able to show a variety of genetic differences between the two a priori groups and that the two groups were more closely related among themselves than they were with each other; in other words, the results of the genetic clustering matched the our previously understood categorization of "dog" and "wolf."

I can't do that with human races. I could, fairly easily pull a hundred photographs out of travel magazines and ask local students to classify them by race. I have little doubt that, first, they'd be able to do that, and second, would generally agree (e.g., photograph #61 was classified as "black" by 94.3% of all classifiers).

That is to say, the social construct of race based on visual appearance is very real.

But if I did a similar clustering task based on genetics, I'd not get anywhere near that good a match. And I could certainly find, among the zillions of genes, a set of specific genetic markers that matched the specific data set, but that just shows that I can overfit curves if I have enough free parameters. Because "race" is not, in fact, tied to anything meaningful at the genetic level.

I'd also like to point out that if I did the same study at NYU and at the University of Amsterdam, I'd not get anywhere near as good inter-rater reliability. (People from the Middle East, including many Israelis, are generally considered ``black'' in the Netherlands, as several of my colleagues have discovered.) Again, this points to the idea of race as a social construct, because everyone understand the idea of "black people" and "white people" but they can't agree on what that means (see How the Irish Became White for more more details on that mess).


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Orfamay Quest wrote:

Because it doesn't fit the historical use of the term "race"; if you go this route, you don't end up with three (or five) convenience "races" that can fit on a census form, but with dozens, and no obvious way to distinguish them from each other without a genetic scan.

Basically, we already have a term for what you suggest -- note the use of the word "haplotype" in the map already presented.

And why is that a bad thing? Why is it a bad thing to set up a definition of race that moves beyond old reliance upon skin color?

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Same answer. If you want to call a specific haplotype a "race," you're abusing the term -- and, again, "African" is no longer a race, nor is "Caucasian."

Am I abusing the term? A race is typically noted as being defined by physical characteristics. I'm just saying a different set of physical characteristics can be used.

I've constantly referred to both of those groups as having multiple races. I fail to see the problem.

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Because the various African haplotypes don't hang together as a group. Hippos and whales together are a group; whales and crabs are not, despite the fact that they may share traits (like living in the ocean) that distinguish them from hippos.

The use of racial groups allows for acknowledgement of particular physical characteristics that are not indicative of race, despite being historically used as such, for cases here there might be something that affects a physical trait they all share. It's a useful shorthand for references to certain problems.

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But that's exactly my point. There is no singular African race, because the genetics don't cluster along the African/non-African dimension. There is also no singular Asian race, because the genetics don't cluster along that division. There is no singular white/Caucasian race, because.... well, you should be ahead of me at this point.

Genetic clustering is relatively easy. But when you look at the clusters, they look nothing at all like the social construct people describe with the term "race."

I've repeatedly used "races" when referring to Caucasians, Africans, East Asians, etc. As in, each group having multiple races. So, I fail to see how acknowledging that these overly-large groups are not actually singular races is a true problem. If anything, separating the concept of race from skin color may do a lot of good.

And isn't the social construct of "race" repeatedly proving to be a problem?

Orfamay Quest wrote:
Kazuka wrote:


But, basically, you're still arguing that you know better than most scientists do and that the science is wrong because of your judgement.
No, actually, I'm arguing that this is what mainstream scientists say and that you're misunderstanding those scientists (badly).

I do not believe I am the one misunderstanding scientists.

"Beginning in the 1930s, with the rise of modern population genetics and evolutionary biology, race was reimagined in the context of evolutionary biology and population genetics. Instead of racial groups being fixed between continents, the race concept was a way to understand the frequency of individual genes in different human populations."

"In this way, race was a methodological tool that biologists could utilize to study human genetic diversity that did not reflect an underlying hierarchy between human populations. This was simply about gene frequencies between groups. And it is this understanding of race that is still largely the way modern science understands the term."

"Race is used widely in human biological research and clinical practice to elucidate the relationship between our ancestry and our genes. In the laboratory, race can be used to investigate disease-causing genes within and between populations, and, more generally to classify groups in studies of human populations. Race is also used clinically to inform decisions about a patient’s risk for certain diseases and to help predict how one might metabolize drugs."

"Most discussions today about race among scientists concern examination of differences between groups with the goal of understanding human evolutionary history, and the relationship between our genes and our health with the goal of determining the best course of medical treatments."

Source


Sissyl wrote:

Intragroup variation being greater than intergroup variation is not even a relevant observation. If you are looking for the tallest people in the world, it means exactly nothing how much variation there is in height among women, at least 990 of the 1000 tallest people around will be men.

[...]

Why does the size of inter/intragroup variability matter at all? Is that relationship really the one that matters?

It's one of the key variables when I'm trying to cluster groups.

I'm not interested in figuring out the 1000 "most Asian" people in the world; I'm not even convinced that makes sense, since group membership is not a scalar upon which you can be rated. I am, however, interested in figuring out if there's any evidentiary basis to say "he is Asian" even though he was born in Omaha, NE and now teaches at the University of Melbourne.

If the variations between groups on some category are large enough, I can draw lines that separate mostly-X from mostly-Y, and get a pretty good separation. I can use something more sophisticated (machine learning and classification is a well-studied field, and people get Ph.D.'s in it, so I won't go into depth here) and do even better. But if the group labels are arbitrary, there's no non-arbitrary way to do the categorization task. And one of the key measures for arbitrariness is the ingroup/outgroup variance ratio.


I'm disappointed. An indirect insult when faced with the words of an actual scientist? Tsk.

Scarab Sages

Kryzbyn wrote:

It'd be cool if the census was just:

American
Visitor

and that's it.

I would note that those of "African" decent and those of "European" decent have noticible differences in propensity for certain diseases when economic factors are accounted for, and knowing for instance that this specific region seeing a spike in certain types of heart disease is also seeing a spike in African residents allows for better handling of the situation.


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Orfamay Quest wrote:
thejeff wrote:
We know, for example, the basic division among Africans and from that we can pretty easily determine if any given two groups are closer to each other than to Japanese Ainu. As I said earlier, there are several distinct genetic groups in Africa, one of which is ancestral to the rest of the world's population. (From that linked Map Y-DNA Adam -> A B DE C F, F->everything else.) If your African groups are within any one of those basic division except F, they're closer to each other than to the Ainu.

Yes. But there's a much higher than chance probability that they're not both within any one of those basic divisions, because variation within groups is much greater than variation between groups.

Which is to say, show me a "black" person, or even an "African," and there's no reason to believe he's more closely related, genetically, to any "African" than he is to an Ainu.

Quote:
Now, I'll agree that the common idea of "black" or "Negroid" as anyone with black skin is not particularly useful.
But the slightly less common idea of "African" isn't much better, given the degree of genetic variation within actual African people. Remember, that map is based on a single chromosome; just because two people are both within Y-DNA haplotype C says little or nothing about their mDNA, since that's inherited entirely independently. So you end up with an oversimplified map based on only a single type of variation, and you still can't point to a specific haplotype and say "this means `white'"

Yes, that map is only based on one chromosome. There are other studies that show very similar patterns. They've done things like identify areas of origin of African Americans based on genetics. And that goes well below the main distinct groups I was talking about.

Of course, part of the problem that's keeping me from disagreeing even more strongly is that there is actually more genetic variation within Africa than in the entire rest of the world. More distinct groups and deeper divisions. That includes even the genetic influence of Neandertals and Denisovians. Because basically only a small part of Africa's diversity actually left (before modern times) and is ancestral to everyone else.
Making this argument about any other region would be much clearer. Any random groups of European descent will be more closely related to each other than to the Khoisan. No question.
Same for any random East Asian groups.

We're not the randomly mixed genetic swirl you seem to be claiming.

Orfamay Quest wrote:
thejeff wrote:
As a side, but somewhat related note on your strict use of clades. I assume you don't agree with the separation of dogs, wolves and coyotes into separate clades? Since they have all interbred (and still do).
As you noted, I'm a pretty strict cladist. In general, dogs are pretty reproductively isolated from both wolves and coyotes, in part because people are pretty good about protecting their dogs, and in part because we're running out of wolves and...

But the Eastern Coyote is pretty much a hybrid coywolf. The real world is messier than the pretty theories and classifications.


As I remember, the Y chromosome map was only ever meant to illustrate that, because the Y chromosome passes directly from father to son, you can track human global migration by sequencing the number of mutations on the Y chromosome. But you have to like, sample every villager everywhere and hope you find enough of the right Y tails to find the signal amid the noise.

But, as I've said before, it was many years ago that I watched that particular episode of NOVA.


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Orfamay Quest wrote:
Sissyl wrote:

Intragroup variation being greater than intergroup variation is not even a relevant observation. If you are looking for the tallest people in the world, it means exactly nothing how much variation there is in height among women, at least 990 of the 1000 tallest people around will be men.

[...]

Why does the size of inter/intragroup variability matter at all? Is that relationship really the one that matters?

It's one of the key variables when I'm trying to cluster groups.

I'm not interested in figuring out the 1000 "most Asian" people in the world; I'm not even convinced that makes sense, since group membership is not a scalar upon which you can be rated. I am, however, interested in figuring out if there's any evidentiary basis to say "he is Asian" even though he was born in Omaha, NE and now teaches at the University of Melbourne.

If the variations between groups on some category are large enough, I can draw lines that separate mostly-X from mostly-Y, and get a pretty good separation. I can use something more sophisticated (machine learning and classification is a well-studied field, and people get Ph.D.'s in it, so I won't go into depth here) and do even better. But if the group labels are arbitrary, there's no non-arbitrary way to do the categorization task. And one of the key measures for arbitrariness is the ingroup/outgroup variance ratio.

Really. I question whether the old bromide of inter/intragroup variance is interesting at all, and you first agree with me that you can get a good separation, then merely say "And one of the key measures for arbitrariness is the ingroup/outgroup variance ratio."

I am disappointed.

To clarify: The relevant measurement is not the variance in and between groups, but their overlap. That is what makes drawing lines easy. The groups I told you about did not overlap significantly, despite intragroup variance being larger than intergroup variance.

And your quip about "most asian" is just a low blow. I merely pointed out another issue of intergroup variability: That the non-overlapping pieces of the groups will be very easy to determine.

Let me reiterate: I was NOT arguing about race. I was arguing that the old bromide about "intragroup variance being bigger than intergroup variance" doesn't provide any sort of useful information.


Sissyl wrote:
Orfamay Quest wrote:


If the variations between groups on some category are large enough, I can draw lines that separate mostly-X from mostly-Y, and get a pretty good separation. I can use something more sophisticated (machine learning and classification is a well-studied field, and people get Ph.D.'s in it, so I won't go into depth here) and do even better. But if the group labels are arbitrary, there's no non-arbitrary way to do the categorization task. And one of the key measures for arbitrariness is the ingroup/outgroup variance ratio.

Really. I question whether the old bromide of inter/intragroup variance is interesting at all, and you first agree with me that you can get a good separation, then merely say "And one of the key measures for arbitrariness is the ingroup/outgroup variance ratio."

Goodness, no. I said if the variations are large enough, I can get a pretty good separation. But how do I know if the variations are large enough?


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Trends in groups and sampling size are a thing. They're pretty much what biology is about.

Sovereign Court

1 person marked this as a favorite.
thejeff wrote:
Kryzbyn wrote:

It'd be cool if the census was just:

American
Visitor

and that's it.

Cool, but less useful. Maybe someday we can get to the point where it won't matter.

It will always matter medically. Certain diseases are more common among certain racial groups etc. So it's useful to know if certain tests are likely needed.


Charon's Little Helper wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Kryzbyn wrote:

It'd be cool if the census was just:

American
Visitor

and that's it.

Cool, but less useful. Maybe someday we can get to the point where it won't matter.
It will always matter medically. Certain diseases are more common among certain racial groups etc. So it's useful to know if certain tests are likely needed.

Yeah, but that's not really going to be gathered from the census.

Besides, I've been told that race is completely irrelevant medically. You can't tell anything from it. :(

Sovereign Court

thejeff wrote:
Charon's Little Helper wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Kryzbyn wrote:

It'd be cool if the census was just:

American
Visitor

and that's it.

Cool, but less useful. Maybe someday we can get to the point where it won't matter.
It will always matter medically. Certain diseases are more common among certain racial groups etc. So it's useful to know if certain tests are likely needed.

Yeah, but that's not really going to be gathered from the census.

Besides, I've been told that race is completely irrelevant medically. You can't tell anything from it. :(

You can't tell 100% (or at least very little - it's pretty easy to say that blacks have more melanin in their skin :P) - but it's still useful to know what tests to run.

For example - you probably wouldn't worry about testing for sickle cell anemia in someone who is Native American or whose ancestory is from western/northern Europe. I believe that it's most common in those of African decent.


Charon's Little Helper wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Charon's Little Helper wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Kryzbyn wrote:

It'd be cool if the census was just:

American
Visitor

and that's it.

Cool, but less useful. Maybe someday we can get to the point where it won't matter.
It will always matter medically. Certain diseases are more common among certain racial groups etc. So it's useful to know if certain tests are likely needed.

Yeah, but that's not really going to be gathered from the census.

Besides, I've been told that race is completely irrelevant medically. You can't tell anything from it. :(

You can't tell 100% (or at least very little - it's pretty easy to say that blacks have more melanin in their skin :P) - but it's still useful to know what tests to run.

For example - you probably wouldn't worry about testing for sickle cell anemia in someone who is Native American or whose ancestory is from western/northern Europe. I believe that it's most common in those of African decent.

Western African. Someone from Egypt wouldn't need to be tested for it either.

There's a few other spots around the glove. Sickle cell anemia maps to malaria.


Ugh, look, medical diagnosis shouldn't be limited by race; if a patient is exhibiting symptoms of sickle cell anemia, please, doc, just test for it, regardless of said patient's race.


Sure you can. There is an enzyme called CYP2D6 in the human liver. It breaks down a very large portion of all medical drugs you get into your body, some 30% or so. Among them morphine.

Genetically, everyone is different, but most have two functioning alleles for it. Some have more than this, giving them more effect (they will need more drug), some have less or none of it, meaning they have less effect (and may very easily overdose on normal doses of the drug given).

Africans have a very large variability in this site. Middle Eastern people have less. Europeans have less still, and American or Asian populations have little if any variability here.

So, if you were a doctor, and didn't have the expected effect from giving your patient a drug targeted by CYP2D6, which one would you take a blood test to check their CYP2D6 genetics, the African or the Asian?


Why isn't "both" a valid answer?


Hitdice wrote:
Why isn't "both" a valid answer?

Because sometimes, you don't have the time to wait. Unfortunately, a medical emergency where two lives are at risk sometimes means you have to rely more on the odds of a person needing a particular test than just running the test for both.


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Hitdice wrote:

Ugh, look, medical diagnosis shouldn't be limited by race; if a patient is exhibiting symptoms of sickle cell anemia, please, doc, just test for it, regardless of said patient's race.

Horses then zebra's.

A doctors motto as well as my dinner plan


Hitdice wrote:
Why isn't "both" a valid answer?

Because there are other things that could be wrong. With the African, it is a rather common occurrence that this is the problem. With the Asian, it is very uncommon and there are likely other issues that are more probable. Which do you test first?

And more importantly, if there is data to support this, do you use that data and swallow your disgust at using race as any kind of criterion, or do you not, even if it costs and your patients get hurt from it?


Kazuka wrote:
Hitdice wrote:
Why isn't "both" a valid answer?
Because sometimes, you don't have the time to wait. Unfortunately, a medical emergency where two lives are at risk sometimes means you have to rely more on the odds of a person needing a particular test than just running the test for both.

Sure, but most of those situations were you don't have the time to wait are physical trauma situations. No responsible doctor on earth would look at a gunshot victim and say, "I can see that he's been shot in the leg and is bleeding out from his femoral artery, but more would you say he's bleeding more like an asian, a black or a white?"

Unless we're talking about that time on Scrubs when Doctor Cox didn't test for rabies before preforming organ transplants, but that's medical procedure issue, not a racial classification issue.


No, that is not the issue here. You have a problem that likely has different explanations for these two patients.

You want to find out why for each of them.

Sure, you can take all the tests for both. It's just that finding something with one of the patients is very improbable, while for the other it is likely. It will also cost more.

So, will you differentiate, or will you take all of it for both, even though you know the likelihoods are not the same?


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Basically it's triage. You've got a set of symptoms with various possible explanations. You can run all the tests and look for all possible causes at once or you can start with the most likely ones and work your way through them.
The same applies to all sorts of medical things, not just race. Race will be one factor in some cases.


Sissyl wrote:

No, that is not the issue here. You have a problem that likely has different explanations for these two patients.

You want to find out why for each of them.

Sure, you can take all the tests for both. It's just that finding something with one of the patients is very improbable, while for the other it is likely. It will also cost more.

So, will you differentiate, or will you take all of it for both, even though you know the likelihoods are not the same?

The bit I bolded describes a symptomatic diagnoses just as well as a racial diagnoses. If diagnosing a symptom is going to save a life, like, immediately, right in front of you, I don't understand why you'd refer to the patient's racial classification instead of their individual medical history.

Ninja'd by TheJeff!


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Hitdice wrote:
Sissyl wrote:

No, that is not the issue here. You have a problem that likely has different explanations for these two patients.

You want to find out why for each of them.

Sure, you can take all the tests for both. It's just that finding something with one of the patients is very improbable, while for the other it is likely. It will also cost more.

So, will you differentiate, or will you take all of it for both, even though you know the likelihoods are not the same?

The bit I bolded describes a symptomatic diagnoses just as well as a racial diagnoses. If diagnosing a symptom is going to save a life, like, immediately, right in front of you, I don't understand why you'd refer to the patient's racial classification instead of their individual medical history.

Ninja'd by TheJeff!

I don't think anyone's been intending to say you use race as the only criteria:

You're black. It must be sickle cell!
But doc, my leg is broken.
Silence!
It's a factor to consider when trying to diagnose something that isn't obvious.

Except that I've been assured that "race" is unreal and completely irrelevant to any medical condition. The white guy is just as likely to have sickle cell anemia as the black one.


thejeff wrote:
Hitdice wrote:
Sissyl wrote:

No, that is not the issue here. You have a problem that likely has different explanations for these two patients.

You want to find out why for each of them.

Sure, you can take all the tests for both. It's just that finding something with one of the patients is very improbable, while for the other it is likely. It will also cost more.

So, will you differentiate, or will you take all of it for both, even though you know the likelihoods are not the same?

The bit I bolded describes a symptomatic diagnoses just as well as a racial diagnoses. If diagnosing a symptom is going to save a life, like, immediately, right in front of you, I don't understand why you'd refer to the patient's racial classification instead of their individual medical history.

Ninja'd by TheJeff!

I don't think anyone's been intending to say you use race as the only criteria:

You're black. It must be sickle cell!
But doc, my leg is broken.
Silence!
It's a factor to consider when trying to diagnose something that isn't obvious.

Except that I've been assured that "race" is unreal and completely irrelevant to any medical condition. The white guy is just as likely to have sickle cell anemia as the black one.

Only if the white guy has an ancestor from Southern Europe or the Middle East.

For the U.S., this is a pretty good guideline as far as populations go. Note there's only one population with a 1-in-10 rate; the rest get it less frequently.

Sovereign Court

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thejeff wrote:


Except that I've been assured that "race" is unreal and completely irrelevant to any medical condition. The white guy is just as likely to have sickle cell anemia as the black one.

Yeah... whoever told you that has no idea what he's talking about.

1/12 people of African descent are carriers for Sickle Cell. (Just carriers - not that they have Sickle Cell Anemia.) Some Hispanics from S/Central America. Fewer people of Middle Eastern, Asian, Indian, and Mediterranean descent. (It has to do with being a carrier actually being beneficial in resisting malaria - so places where malaria was historically more common have a much higher occurrence of sickle cell.)

American Society of Hematology

Edit: Once clicked above link - realized that I'd been very ninja'd. >.< (though different page of the same site)


Charon's Little Helper wrote:
thejeff wrote:


Except that I've been assured that "race" is unreal and completely irrelevant to any medical condition. The white guy is just as likely to have sickle cell anemia as the black one.

Yeah... whoever told you that has no idea what he's talking about.

1/12 people of African descent are carriers for Sickle Cell. (Just carriers - not that they have Sickle Cell Anemia.) Some Hispanics from S/Central America. Fewer people of Middle Eastern, Asian, Indian, and Mediterranean descent. (It has to do with being a carrier actually being beneficial in resisting malaria - so places where malaria was historically more common have a much higher occurrence of sickle cell.)

Oh, I'm well aware of it. I'm also pretty sure it's not what Orfamy was really saying, but I can't what he actually was saying.


thejeff wrote:
Charon's Little Helper wrote:
thejeff wrote:


Except that I've been assured that "race" is unreal and completely irrelevant to any medical condition. The white guy is just as likely to have sickle cell anemia as the black one.

Yeah... whoever told you that has no idea what he's talking about.

1/12 people of African descent are carriers for Sickle Cell. (Just carriers - not that they have Sickle Cell Anemia.) Some Hispanics from S/Central America. Fewer people of Middle Eastern, Asian, Indian, and Mediterranean descent. (It has to do with being a carrier actually being beneficial in resisting malaria - so places where malaria was historically more common have a much higher occurrence of sickle cell.)

Oh, I'm well aware of it. I'm also pretty sure it's not what Orfamy was really saying, but I can't what he actually was saying.

I suspect what he was saying is that people ought to be treated based upon things that are real, like symptoms and test results, not imprecise social concepts such as race.


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Scythia wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Charon's Little Helper wrote:
thejeff wrote:

Except that I've been assured that "race" is unreal and completely irrelevant to any medical condition. The white guy is just as likely to have sickle cell anemia as the black one.

Yeah... whoever told you that has no idea what he's talking about.

1/12 people of African descent are carriers for Sickle Cell. (Just carriers - not that they have Sickle Cell Anemia.) Some Hispanics from S/Central America. Fewer people of Middle Eastern, Asian, Indian, and Mediterranean descent. (It has to do with being a carrier actually being beneficial in resisting malaria - so places where malaria was historically more common have a much higher occurrence of sickle cell.)

Oh, I'm well aware of it. I'm also pretty sure it's not what Orfamy was really saying, but I can't what he actually was saying.
I suspect what he was saying is that people ought to be treated based upon things that are real, like symptoms and test results, not imprecise social concepts such as race.

Which doesn't clear anything up.

Does that mean, since race is just a social concept, it shouldn't be used at all in diagnosis and we should treat the white guy and the black guy as equally at risk for sickle cell anemia?
Or that you can and should use it as a factor in what to test for (first), but don't actually base treatment just on race - which would be crazy and no one is recommending it.


thejeff wrote:
Scythia wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Charon's Little Helper wrote:
thejeff wrote:

Except that I've been assured that "race" is unreal and completely irrelevant to any medical condition. The white guy is just as likely to have sickle cell anemia as the black one.

Yeah... whoever told you that has no idea what he's talking about.

1/12 people of African descent are carriers for Sickle Cell. (Just carriers - not that they have Sickle Cell Anemia.) Some Hispanics from S/Central America. Fewer people of Middle Eastern, Asian, Indian, and Mediterranean descent. (It has to do with being a carrier actually being beneficial in resisting malaria - so places where malaria was historically more common have a much higher occurrence of sickle cell.)

Oh, I'm well aware of it. I'm also pretty sure it's not what Orfamy was really saying, but I can't what he actually was saying.
I suspect what he was saying is that people ought to be treated based upon things that are real, like symptoms and test results, not imprecise social concepts such as race.

Which doesn't clear anything up.

Does that mean, since race is just a social concept, it shouldn't be used at all in diagnosis and we should treat the white guy and the black guy as equally at risk for sickle cell anemia?
Or that you can and should use it as a factor in what to test for (first), but don't actually base treatment just on race - which would be crazy and no one is recommending it.

How about this: if the person is showing symptoms of sickle cell anemia, and tests support the diagnosis, then you treat them for it. Race need not play a part.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Scythia wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Scythia wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Charon's Little Helper wrote:
thejeff wrote:

Except that I've been assured that "race" is unreal and completely irrelevant to any medical condition. The white guy is just as likely to have sickle cell anemia as the black one.

Yeah... whoever told you that has no idea what he's talking about.

1/12 people of African descent are carriers for Sickle Cell. (Just carriers - not that they have Sickle Cell Anemia.) Some Hispanics from S/Central America. Fewer people of Middle Eastern, Asian, Indian, and Mediterranean descent. (It has to do with being a carrier actually being beneficial in resisting malaria - so places where malaria was historically more common have a much higher occurrence of sickle cell.)

Oh, I'm well aware of it. I'm also pretty sure it's not what Orfamy was really saying, but I can't what he actually was saying.
I suspect what he was saying is that people ought to be treated based upon things that are real, like symptoms and test results, not imprecise social concepts such as race.

Which doesn't clear anything up.

Does that mean, since race is just a social concept, it shouldn't be used at all in diagnosis and we should treat the white guy and the black guy as equally at risk for sickle cell anemia?
Or that you can and should use it as a factor in what to test for (first), but don't actually base treatment just on race - which would be crazy and no one is recommending it.
How about this: if the person is showing symptoms of sickle cell anemia, and tests support the diagnosis, then you treat them for it. Race need not play a part.

And we cycle back through the previous discussion: Sure - if it's obvious that's it's sickle cell anemia and nothing else, then you test for that and treat them for it.

In cases where it's not completely obvious and there are multiple potential possible causes for the symptoms, you test for the likely things first - not every remote possibility at once because that would be prohibitively expensive - and in some cases race will be one factor in that analysis.

In other words though, you agree with what I said I'd been told at the top of this exchange ""race" is unreal and completely irrelevant to any medical condition. The white guy is just as likely to have sickle cell anemia as the black one." Or at least a doctor should treat them that way.


thejeff wrote:
Scythia wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Scythia wrote:
thejeff wrote:
Charon's Little Helper wrote:
thejeff wrote:

Except that I've been assured that "race" is unreal and completely irrelevant to any medical condition. The white guy is just as likely to have sickle cell anemia as the black one.

Yeah... whoever told you that has no idea what he's talking about.

1/12 people of African descent are carriers for Sickle Cell. (Just carriers - not that they have Sickle Cell Anemia.) Some Hispanics from S/Central America. Fewer people of Middle Eastern, Asian, Indian, and Mediterranean descent. (It has to do with being a carrier actually being beneficial in resisting malaria - so places where malaria was historically more common have a much higher occurrence of sickle cell.)

Oh, I'm well aware of it. I'm also pretty sure it's not what Orfamy was really saying, but I can't what he actually was saying.
I suspect what he was saying is that people ought to be treated based upon things that are real, like symptoms and test results, not imprecise social concepts such as race.

Which doesn't clear anything up.

Does that mean, since race is just a social concept, it shouldn't be used at all in diagnosis and we should treat the white guy and the black guy as equally at risk for sickle cell anemia?
Or that you can and should use it as a factor in what to test for (first), but don't actually base treatment just on race - which would be crazy and no one is recommending it.
How about this: if the person is showing symptoms of sickle cell anemia, and tests support the diagnosis, then you treat them for it. Race need not play a part.

And we cycle back through the previous discussion: Sure - if it's obvious that's it's sickle cell anemia and nothing else, then you test for that and treat them for it.

In cases where it's not completely obvious and there are multiple potential possible causes for the symptoms, you test for the likely things first - not every remote possibility at once because that would be prohibitively expensive - and in some cases race will be one factor in that analysis.
In other words though, you agree with what I said I'd been told at the top of this exchange ""race" is unreal and completely irrelevant to any medical condition. The white guy is just as likely to have sickle cell anemia as the black one." Or at least a doctor should treat them that way.

Or, a doctor might decide that a person is of a particular race, and end up ruling out the condition, leading to death or irreparable organ damage because they used their perception of the patient's race as a diagnostic factor. I don't think that's better.

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