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From: "Alfred A. Aburto Jr." <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Neil Risch and torsion dystonia
Date: Tue, 01 Jan 2008 08:30:29 -0800
References: <C39F3FDD.10B3F%runjonrun@earthlink.net>
In-Reply-To: <C39F3FDD.10B3F%runjonrun@earthlink.net>
> Jon Entine wrote:
>Risch has also used his torsion dystonia study to weigh in on the Cochran
>hypothesis that positive selection may be at work in explaining high
>Ashkenazi IQ.
>
>A decade ago, Jared Diamond of UCLA, University of Utah geneticist Lynn
>Jorde, and other scientists speculated that in the case of Tay-Sachs, the
>mutation might have offered protection against ³ghetto diseases,² like
>tuberculosis, smallpox, and bubonic plague, which ravaged the poor
>populations of Europe during the Middle Ages. Yet, as Risch has pointed out,
>French Canadians have a version of Tay-Sachs that originated with a
>different founder, but which occurs at almost the same frequency as among
>Ashkenazim, but ³I¹ve never heard anybody arguing that Tay-Sachs provides
>them an advantage against tuberculosis in crowded ghettos!² (Risch¹s
>exclamation aside, French Canadians, like Jews, are descended from a small
>founder populationthousands of French landed in Quebec some 300-400 years
>ago, many of whom, like Jews, lived for centuries in poor, insular
>communities.) Most ghetto diseases are now largely under control and today
>rarely affect Jews (or French Canadians), and yet the disease gene for
>Tay-Sachs in Jews persists.
>
>
>
The disease gene for Tay-Sachs persists in French Canadians too, right?
It may be that controlling the _effect_ of the disease gene for
Tay-Sachs will not necessarily eliminate it (via evolutionary means)?
Perhaps other measures must be taken to eliminate Tay-Sachs altogether?
Al
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