DNA Updates
and related
Anthropological Notes
pertinent to
Brit-Am
BAMAD-14
BAMAD-13
Updates in DNA studies along with Anthropological Notes of general interest with a particular emphasis on points pertinent to the study of Ancient Israelite Ancestral Connections to Western Peoples as explained in Brit-Am studies.
Brit-Am
Research
Revelation
Reconciliation
Brit-Am
DNA and
Anthropology UPdates
1. Skin
colour
linked to vitamin D deficiency
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20071218/
vitamin_071218/20071218?hub=Health
A new study has confirmed that people of colour -- those of African
and east Asian background -- may be dangerously low in vitamin D -- so
low it surprised researchers.
Esteban Parra of the Department of Anthropology at the University of
Toronto conducted his study last winter by testing the blood of
students on the Mississauga campus at the University of Toronto from a
variety of ethnic backgrounds.
He asked 106 healthy young adults to report their ancestry and to keep
a diary of everything they ate and all the supplements they took for a
week. He then tested their blood for vitamin D, which are measured in
25-hydroxyvitamin D (25-OHD) levels.
Anything above 75 nanomoles per litre (nmol/L) of 25-OHD is considered
optimal. Anything less than 25 nmol/L is considered seriously
deficient, a level that would put one at risk of developing rickets, a
condition in which the bones grow soft. A level between 25 and 50
nmol/L is considered insufficient but not yet low enough to lead to a
deficiency.
His first surprise was just how many of the otherwise healthy students
were seriously deficient in vitamin D during the winter months, when
the number of daylight hours is shortened and when people are less
likely to absorb sunlight through exposed skin.
"We found a very high prevalence of insufficiency," Parra reports.
His second finding was that the darker the skin of the students, the
lower their levels of vitamin D.
Among those of European origin, with lighter skin, 34 per cent had
insufficient levels of vitamin D.
Among those from East Asian or Chinese descent, 85 per cent had
insufficient levels.
Among those from South Asia -- countries such as India -- 93 per cent
had insufficient levels.
And among those of African ancestry, 100 per cent -- everyone tested
-- had insufficient levels. And among this group, about 43 per cent
were considered deficient, with levels below 25 nmol/L.
The study is awaiting publication in an academic journal.
Parra says that the reason that the darker-skinned students had lower
vitamin D levels is that darker skin contains a natural sunblock,
making it harder for the skin to produce vitamin D from the sun.
The fact that darker-skinned people are not as able to absorb is not
new, but the results startled even Parra.
"I was really surprised, because I know that it would be expected that
there was going to be a difference. But I didn't think it was going to
be that high," he says.
Many of the students weren't aware they were deficient in vitamin D,
even though most reported that they regularly drank vitamin
D-fortified milk and dairy products.
"I am someone who makes sure I get a lot of sunlight, making sure I
get external exposure every day. I thought I was getting the right
amount of vitamin D," says one of the test subjects, Roselle
Gonsalves, who is of South Asian ancestry and says she takes a daily
multivitamin.
Dr. Reinhold Veith, a nutritional researcher at Mount Sinai Hospital
in Toronto says he was impressed with the study.
"The results are really quite surprising because we'd expect young
people to be outside more than others, but they're almost shockingly
low in vitamin D levels," he says.
"Vitamin D affects lots of aspects of health. I mean there is the bone
but also cancer, and even risk of type 2 diabetes. These are not minor
items."
A landmark study, released earlier this year, found that a combination
of vitamin D3 and calcium had a substantially marked effect on
reducing cancer incidence. The four-year study found that women who
regularly took vitamin D3 had a 60 per cent reduction in cancer
infections compared to a group taking placebos.
Shortly after the release of that study, the Canadian Cancer Society
issued a recommendation that Canadians take 1,000 International Units
of vitamin D during winter months. It also advised those with darker
skin to take 1,000 IU units year-round.
Veith believes those are excellent recommendations.
"I think it is a lot like saving for your retirement, you know: the
sooner you start, the better," he says.
"What easier way is there to save for your healthy retirement than to
protect yourself when you are younger -- in this case, it is probably
taking a vitamin D supplement, something I don't think any university
student does."
"It's almost like: 'Why should I worry about smoking? I'm healthy
right now, I can keep smoking.' I think the vitamin D story is very
much analogous to the smoking story, that it will catch up to you in
the end, so you better start doing something about it now."
Parra says he hopes this study will remind Canadians to take their
vitamin D supplements, particularly because they are already at risk
of deficiencies because of the country's latitude and short summers.
"I think the research in the last decade has been very clear in
indicating that vitamin D is very important for ultimate health," he
says. "And again, it's not that it is something unachievable, really,
to get ultimate levels."
2. Brit-Am DNA Suggestion Strengthened
by Creationist Site
Brit-Am suggested that the YDNA "evolutionary" tree should be reversed:
We said that instead of beginning with A (Bushmen in Africa) and proceeding
to R (East and West Europeans) becoming more and more complex
it should begin with R and proceed to A becoming more simple.
The note below remarking that all perceived mutations in DNA result in a loss
of information strengthens this suggestion.
JOES CREATIONISM VS EVOLUTION WEB PAGE
http://members.aol.com/BrainMan10/create1.html
Extract:
#2. All observed mutations cause a loss
of DNA information.
Example - all experiments in the laboratory that involve the DNA of mutated
specimens always show a loss of DNA information, for evolution to truly take
place there must be the addition of new data to the DNA chain - yet this has
never been the case. In fact many evolutionist always show animals that have
loss some feature (de-evolution) and hold that up as an example of evolution.
3. Germans 'brightest' Europeans
http://www.news24.com/News24/Technology/News/0,6119,2-13-1443_1905267,00.htm
27/03/2006 12:59 - (SA)
London - Germans are the most intelligent people in Europe, well ahead of the
British (in eighth place) and the French (15th), according to a new study by
Northern Ireland's University of Ulster, The Times reported Monday.
With an average intelligence quotient (IQ) of 107, a scintilla of brainpower
above the Dutch who also scored 107, the Polish (106), the Swedish (104) and the
Italians (102).
They all came out better in the intelligence stakes than the British who rated
an even 100 IQ according to the study, ahead of the Spanish (98) and the French
(94) who could only comfort themselves by checking the study results for
Bulgarians, Romanians, the Turkish and Serbians who languished at the bottom of
the table on 89.
Professor Richard Lynn, who headed the study, caused controversy last year by
claiming that men were more intelligent than women by about five IQ points on
average.
He said of his latest findings that populations in the colder, more challenging
environments of Northern Europe had developed larger brains than those in warmer
climates further south.
The average brain size in Northern and Central Europe is 1 320cc and in
southeast Europe it is 1 312cc, according to his studies.
He ascribes the differences between British and French intelligence levels to
the results of military conflict. He described it as "a hitherto unrecognised
law of history" that "the side with the higher IQ normally wins, unless they are
hugely outnumbered, as Germany was after 1942", The Times reported.
Brit-Am Note: These tests in a way
reflect their own fallibility.
Hans Eysenck
claimed that IQ was hereditary. He also claimed that the Irish and Polish were
inheritably of
lower intelligence. At at that time the Poles scored lowest of all Europeans.
The problem is that today they are in third place and just one point below the
Dutch and Germans.
cf.
http://www.overalltech.net/huff/YIQRace.htm
<<The history of these racial differences is frequently overlooked by people
attempting to prove that such differences in test scores represent a genetic
rather than a cultural difference. "The Bell Curve" sounds plausible until you
read a few other books in the field and realize that TBC did not actually answer
any of the criticism against the theory but just glossed over them. One of the
biggest was also one of the earliest. When IQ testing was first done in the US,
Blacks in the urban North scored higher average scores than Whites in the rural
South. This difference was pointed out by Klineberg. Irish and Poles scored
lower than other whites. The TBC types of the time attributed these differences
to genetics. Opponents citing the higher scores of Blacks in the North said
environment and attributed the low scores of Irish and Poles to the negative
effects of Papism. Today the IQ scores of Irish and Poles are somehow not
tabulated as separate from the IQ scores of other whites. It is worth noting
that today the Poles score 3rd highest in average IQ in Europe. The
English score 6 points on average below them. This is the opposite of the
difference in IQs of people of English and Polish descent at the time of WWI in
the US. Clearly this difference is environmental not genetic.
4. Hans
Jurgen
Eysenck
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Eysenck
Extract:
(March 4, 1916 in Berlin, Germany - September 4, 1997 in London, UK) was a
psychologist best remembered for his work on intelligence and personality,
though he worked in a wide range of areas. At the time of his death, Eysenck was
the living psychologist most frequently cited in science journals. [1]
Hans Eysenck was born in Germany, but moved to England as a young man in the
1930s because of his opposition to the Nazi party. Eysenck was the founding
editor of the journal Personality and Individual Differences, and authored over
50 books and over 900 academic articles. He aroused intense debate with his
controversial dealing with variation in IQ among racial groups (see race and
intelligence).
See also:
Hans Jurgen Eysenck, Ph.D., D.Sc. (1916-1997)
OBITUARY NOTICE and CHRONOLOGY
by
CHRIS BRAND
http://www.crispian.demon.co.uk/eysenckob.htm
5. Researchers Say Intelligence and
Diseases May Be Linked in
Ashkenazic Genes
http://tinyurl.com/dn8wc
See also:
BAMAD Archives
DNA
DNA Refuted. The "Cohen Gene"
mtDNA
Y DNA
R1b The Western Japhet?? or not?
haplogroup I
Brit-Am DNA
THE PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF
THE HEBREW PEOPLES
Queries about Race
BAMAD-13
Brit-Am Anthropology and DNA Update
12 Tebet 5768, 21 December 2007
Contents:
1. More 'Functional' DNA in Genome Than Previously Thought
2. The Asian Flush- Asians have less resistance and therefore drink less?
3. MtDNA
Ancient Europeans Different from Modern Ones?
4. Ireland DNA: Guinness story moves from riches to rags
5. Jewish Intelligence and Certain Diseases?
1. More
'Functional' DNA in Genome Than Previously Thought
http://newswire.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20071211.122435&time=13%2011%20PST&year=2007&public=0
2. The Asian
Flush- Asians have less resistance and therefore drink less?
http://www.blogsoop.com/blog/is-asian-flush-evolutionarily-adaptive/
3.MtDNA
Ancient Europeans Different from Modern Ones
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/310/5750/1016
Extract:
We successfully extracted and sequenced intact stretches of maternally inherited
mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from 24 out of 57 Neolithic skeletons from various
locations in Germany, Austria, and Hungary. We found that 25% of the Neolithic
farmers had one characteristic mtDNA type and that this type formerly was
widespread among Neolithic farmers in Central Europe. Europeans today have a
150-times lower frequency (0.2%) of this mtDNA type, revealing that these first
Neolithic farmers did not have a strong genetic influence on modern European
female lineages.
4. Ireland DNA:
Guinness story moves from riches to rags
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article3054149.ece
5. Jewish
Intelligence and Certain Diseases?
http://www.abrahamschildren.net/
John Entine, "Abraham's Children. Race, identity, and DNA of the Chosen"
has written a valuable book that is stirring some controversy.
We have read this work but feel we will have to re-read it and perhaps review it
later.
On the one hand, it does not seem to say much that is new but it does give a
good overview
of DNA research in general and Jewish DNA in particular.
One point for discussion it raises is the possible association of a high
intelligence
and certain hereditary diseases, a kind of "trade-off" in nature.
This is not an iron-cast rule since Intelligence is an aspect of health
and intelligent people, all other things being equal, actually have more chance
statistically to be healthy.
Nevertheless there are exceptions that are genetically linked and these are
worth
considering.
