Genetic Diseases from Inbreeding

[Dennis4]

Interesting research: http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=4032638

This study will soon be published in the Journal of Biosocial Science.

 

[Loren Booda]

The thesis presented sounds too much like the proposal that black slaves were bred to be more physical, less intelligent and in turn better breeders over a span of several hundred years. I doubt that any group of humans could alter the intelligence from their gene pool substantially within the last 2000 years. The brain is too complex an organ, whose recent major changes (such as to homo sapiens sapiens) took place over the past 30,000-100,000 years. Granted, there have been more reasons to value intelligence as a tool for survival since the onset of civilization, ~3000 BC, but this should be reflected in the population as a whole.

[Are there genetic diseases from outbreeding?]

 

[Loren Booda]

Four nongenetic reasons possible for Ashkenazi success:

A tradition of intellectualism.

Reliance on the nonmaterial.

Rational interpretation of the Torah.

An advanced social perspective.

 

[Dennis4]

[Are there genetic diseases from outbreeding?]

My understanding is that since genetic diseases tend to be recessive, one is more likely to be paired with two of these recessive genes via inbreeding than outbreeding.

 

[Monique]

This is very interesting:

But the thesis also has a strong point: it makes a clear and testable prediction. This is that people with a single copy of the gene for Tay-Sachs, or that for Gaucher's, or that for Niemann-Pick should be more intelligent than average.

And on a side note: I've studied Gaucher disease, where my supervisor commented that people with the disease are intelligent beings.

 

[hitssquad]

Reverse-dominant genetic disease

Are there genetic diseases from outbreeding?

Do you mean a reverse-dominant disease — one that expresses when there is one copy of a particular gene but does not express when there are two copies?

 

[Monique]

Does that even exist?