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2019-10-17 Science & Technology
An ‘unprecedented' analysis underlines profound failure to study African genomes
[STAT] It has become the geneticist’s version of, "What, me not inclusive? But I have a black friend!" In the case of modern studies of DNA, researchers called to task for studying mainly European populations often defend themselves by pointing out that they included some Yoruba (or Khoisan or Bantu or other African) DNA in their analysis, too.

Research presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) on Tuesday and Wednesday shows how "woefully inadequate" such tokenism is, said Dr. Neil Hanchard of Baylor College of Medicine, who led one of the studies.

He and his colleagues sequenced the genomes of 426 people from 13 African countries and 50 ethnolinguistic groups from across the continent, producing "an unprecedented, in-depth cataloging of the genetic diversity of people across the African continent," said Dr. Kiran Musunuru, a medical geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania and chair of the ASHG program committee who was not involved in the study.

The research was done as part of Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa), a consortium that was launched in 2013 to remedy the underrepresentation of that continent in genetics research.

"There is so much genetic diversity across the African continent, if you sample from just one or two ethnolinguistic groups you know something about one or two groups," Hanchard said. Because most studies linking a DNA variant to a disease or other trait have been done on Europeans, and the human "reference genome" ‐ hailed as the blueprint of humankind ‐ is missing millions of DNA sequences that are found only in Africans, people of African ancestry are at risk of not benefitting from gene-based personalized medicine.
Posted by Besoeker 2019-10-17 01:33|| || Front Page|| [11128 views ]  Top

#1 Bully for them! Of course, there are some unenlightenedpeople who are skeptical of the HGP benefits - but, IMO, they're just jealous.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2019-10-17 02:50||   2019-10-17 02:50|| Front Page Top

#2 Maybe nobody wants to know.
Posted by Skidmark 2019-10-17 06:57||   2019-10-17 06:57|| Front Page Top

#3 ....and the human "reference genome" ‐ hailed as the blueprint of humankind ‐ is missing millions of DNA sequences that are found only in Africans

Perhaps the preliminary analysis conducted has disproven the alleged blueprint ?
Posted by Besoeker 2019-10-17 07:03||   2019-10-17 07:03|| Front Page Top

#4 people of African ancestry are at risk of not benefitting from gene-based personalized medicine

As opposed to when drugs were pre-tested on simians before human trials.
Posted by Dron66046 2019-10-17 07:45||   2019-10-17 07:45|| Front Page Top

#5 Gee, follow the money.
Posted by Procopius2k 2019-10-17 09:46||   2019-10-17 09:46|| Front Page Top

#6 Let me think about it for a second: Go to Europe where their is excellent health care on call and good food, public records to trace genealogies for centuries, or... Africa where there are various fevers known and unknown out in the countrysides. Let me think about it and get back to you.
Posted by magpie 2019-10-17 11:08||   2019-10-17 11:08|| Front Page Top

#7 It's even simpler than that magpie. These people went to Africa and examined "426 people from 13 African countries and 50 ethnolinguistic groups" [wow]. When asked "well did you find anything interesting?" they had nothing to say. So they pulled the racist card.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2019-10-17 11:20||   2019-10-17 11:20|| Front Page Top

#8 Well, that's today's story. 3 days ago we had "South African scientists demand the return of hundreds of tribal DNA samples after a British institute was accused of trying to use them to make money"
Posted by Whung Flosing9313 2019-10-17 11:34||   2019-10-17 11:34|| Front Page Top

#9 This is where the Chinese are going to kick our ass. Unbiased, disinterested research on taboo topics.

Our SJWs in the universities view their role as preventing harmful truths from being publicized. The Chinese don't give a shit. Be prepared for the uncanny result of woke Leftists calling Chinese people chinky-dinky rat men incapable of rational thought.

It's Us vs. Them, don't look for consistency among the Left. They will happily betray their own principles to play to their preexisting prejudices.
Posted by Herb McCoy  2019-10-17 16:28||   2019-10-17 16:28|| Front Page Top

#10 This is where the Chinese are going to kick our ass. Unbiased, disinterested research on taboo topics.

Well, I'll give you 5/100 points for knowing what "disinterested" means. But the rest of it is a bloody joke. Just look how many original (not an elaboration on somebody else's work) scientific papers Chinese publish.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2019-10-17 16:47||   2019-10-17 16:47|| Front Page Top

#11 To coin a phrase, don't get cocky, grom.

Identity politics is now spreading its poison across the sciences.

It could take a decade or two, but Herb may be proved right on this one.
Posted by Lex 2019-10-17 17:14||   2019-10-17 17:14|| Front Page Top

#12 Unbiased, disinterested research on taboo topics.


What g(r)omgoru said. Also, how does a totalitarian society that hired Google to set up a social points system with facial recognition and immediate, real-life repercussions — on top of cutting out access to any search terms the Communist government lists as verboten — do anything unbiased and disinterested? These are Mao’s culture warriors all grown up, from the culture that spawned the Khmer Rouge and Shining Path among so many others, not former College Republicans.
Posted by trailing wife 2019-10-17 17:45||   2019-10-17 17:45|| Front Page Top

#13 Identity politics is now spreading its poison across the sciences.

It could take a decade or two, but Herb may be proved right on this one.

There are two separate issues here.
(a) The decline of Western science
(b) Chinese science.

(a) The decline is, IMO, exaggerated. People are beginning to notice that straight A/super collegial (and, of course, victim class) students make lousy scientists - because "collegiality" = ass kissing and getting straight A = never argue with the teacher. However, every significant scientific advance starts with somebody who's arrogant enough to think "suppose everybody else, but me, is wrong (on this particular issue)?"*.
The conformists, once they become independent researchers, publish trivialities, or (most of them are ego-putzes who come to believe - because of their fucking grades, that they're geniuses) start faking results, and get caught.

(b) Chinese, because of Confucianism, are very strongly consensus & group think. Notice how in their folklore only the, perpetually drunk, Taoist monks show any signs of non-consensus thinking?



* 99% of the time they're wrong. But the 1% is where all the human advances come from.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2019-10-17 18:02||   2019-10-17 18:02|| Front Page Top

#14 There is a third point Lex. Part of the decline, IMO, is that most original thinkers in the West were siphoned into computer programming. Now it comes to the end because general, wide-application programming packages replace specific programs. Remember when people were writing specific book-keeping programs? Nowadays you can do it all with Excel. So, you don't need so many programmers. But, creative people gotta create.

And, by the way, Chinese write lots of programs?
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2019-10-17 18:12||   2019-10-17 18:12|| Front Page Top

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