Science & Soul Wisdom: 2016

Monday, October 17, 2016

In Battle between Science & Religion in the West, the Winner is Asia

I’ve never really understood the "science" of Creationism. The most vital and meaningful ideas and innovations are almost always exportable, from the country of origin to the rest of the world. We all hunger for new products or inspirations, which offer even the vaguest promise of easing life’s material or spiritual discomforts. Bananas and band-aids, melons and modern medicine have found their way to every corner of the globe. One needn’t practice a particular religion nor adhere to a particular creed in order to enjoy the advantages of modern dentistry, or use an iphone.

What benefit does Creationism offer the 3+ billion people in the world who do not practice Christianity? Most of this number will know nothing about the Bible. They would therefore be at a decided disadvantage if, in searching for work, they responded to a classified ad in a newspaper for a tour guide at a Creationist Museum.

But when I think of the future, it is the American labor force, that will be at the greatest disadvantage in virtually all other job categories. Globalization has intensified competition among countries. Asian religions do not impede scientific innovation and technology, because they are not hogtied by a tension between the scientific and religious communities. Buddhism, Taoism, Vedanta Hinduism, are non-theistic. The goal is wisdom or enlightenment rather than loyal adherence to particular creeds or dogmas. Young Asians will not have to choose between the faith of their fathers and a scientific career. China will in all probability emerge as a superpower in the decades to come, and other Asian nations follow suit. In any future battles between science and religion in the West, Asia will win every round.

Did the Mathematicians Kill Theoretical Astrophysics?

Did Mathematics Destroy Astrophysics?

Ever since I read Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End" (four times) in sixth grade I had wanted to be an astronomer. I yearned to understand life, nature, how we got here, by exploring the infinite cosmos. But life had other plans for me. The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King during the spring of my sophomore year knocked that goal off course. As a black student at Harvard and a product of the Civil Rights Movement, astronomy seemed too effete, too irrelevant to the needs of my community in distress. I became a historian instead, seeking answers to life's existential questions in the narrative of human behavior.

To be honest, there were times when I regretted that decision. But those feelings of nostalgia dissolved over the years as I watched astronomers and theoretical astrophysicists enter a realm of fantasy no less detached from the real world than religious belief. String, superstring theory, the multiverse hypotheses were mathematical formulations that answered fundamental questions about the nature of the universe. But they were theologies, disguised as science. Advanced mathematics was their "ecclesiastical Latin," used to keep their congregants in awe of, but unable to penetrate their foundational theories.

It was in picking up a copy of Professor Lee Smolin's book, The Problem with Physics, (a book I read five times), that expression was given to my unease regarding the direction astrophysics had taken in recent decades. Prof. Smolin, who founded the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, Canada has since expanded on these ideas with two new books, Time Reborn and The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time, written in collaboration with philosopher of Science, Roberto Mangabeira Unger , who teachs at Harvard Law School.

These books are readable, but also depressing, in suggesting that for the past several decades, so little progress has been made in the search for a "theory of everything", which would unify quantum mechanics and the macro-world in which we live, because some of the best scientific minds have been hijacked by theories that, like religion, are unprovable by scientific experimentation. These theories, though glamorous, gained a powerful hold over university physics' departments, leading the most promising students to either sign on to them or risk having no future at all in the field.

If you want to know what's wrong with theories of multiverses, infinite universes, and the multiplicity of superstring theories that declare the world is made up of any number of hidden dimensions, please read Prof. Smolin for the details. The basic issues are not, however, hard to grasp. Scientists had been stuck for decades in their search for a principle that unified the laws governing the world we see, with those of subatomic particles. The behavior of atoms was determined by quantum mechanics, laws that seemed nonsensical in the observable world. How could light be both a wave and a particle? How was it possible for an atomic particle to be at two places at one time, a process known as quantum entanglement. These weirdnesses could not be dismissed, however preposterous they might seem, because the actual functioning of modern technology from radios to cellphones were based on them.

The mathematicians entered the confusion and began propounding numerical theories. But the problem as Smolin points out in his work is the fact that the human brain can devise an infinite number of mathematical abstractions. Just because mathematical formulas can be constructed to explain natural phenomena, does not mean that these solutions are applicable to what happens in the real world. As a consequence, mathematics gave us an infinite number of so-called real worlds. It is a beautiful notion that caught the public's imagination. Who wouldn't want to believe so soothing a theology as that every bad decision we made in life was reversed in a different universe?

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Saturday, October 8, 2016

If You Want Super-Smart Kids, Marry a Pygmy

However, if you happen to be a pygmy, that is, one of the small-statured ethnicities of central Africa, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, then your best bet is probably to marry someone from Sweden or the Ukraine. It confounds me that some researchers still talk of racial differences in intelligence. They operate from the disproved premise that those with the highest levels of cognitive functioning will be those of inbred European ancestry.

The healthiest human beings both cognitively and physically, will be those whose genome suppress the largest number of recessive genetic and chromosomal abnormalities. Thus genetic distance, where one parent has the most geographically removed ancestry from the other, is the key to giving birth to super-smart as well as super-athletic kids.

Of course a whole host of cultural prejudices obscure this basic point as do more practical matters. If you want your child to end up in the NBA, you will also have to take height into consideration. In that case, if you are a tall European, your best bet will be a tall Namibian, from the southwestern part of Africa, or perhaps a tall person from China.  If religious considerations determine the culture and continent from which you will seek out the ideal genetic mate, then the process remains the same. The hardiest and smartest Israeli Jews will be those born of Russian Jewish parentage, married to Ethiopian Jews.

Another obstacle is the false dualism of "brains versus brawn." Cultural reasons exist for giving the two attributes an inverse correlation, not rational ones. Some people still believe that brunettes have higher IQs than blonds, and that an inverse correlation exists between a female's brassiere size and intelligence.

Of course, critics will argue that if height can be manipulated genetically, so can intelligence. But put quite simply, nature doesn't work that way.   The reason may be that nature does not put a premium on tallness, even though certain human societies might do so for aesthetic reasons. Pygmies are short because it is an appropriate adaptation to the densely wooded forests in which they live. Intelligence, however, is not a neutral attribute, like shortness or tallness.  Evolution favors high rather than low intelligence, on every continent, within every ethnic and population group, because this trait gives humans our greatest tool for survival -- adaptability.     If intelligence has any genetic constellation of components at all, and your goal is still, after reading this post, to have super-smart kids, then marry a genius from a different population group than your own.

However, the problem inherent in that course of action is that whatever group is making the IQ tests to determine "intelligence," will unwittingly or not, make sure that their children have the highest scores. So, you'd best not trust European IQ tests if you're looking for a pygmy bride. In 1897, an American scholar named G.R. Stetson decided to investigate black-white differences in intelligence. Stetson devised a test in which four stanzas of poetry were read to 500 African-American children and 500 European-American ones. When the black children outperformed the white ones, Stetson made the determination that  a child's ability to memorize was not an indicator of intelligence. [G.R. Stetson, "Some Memory Tests of Whtes and Blacks," Psychological Review, 4, 1897, 285-289].

So little has been researched and written about the role genetic distance plays in determining the health and intelligence of a child. Even though U.S. society elected its first black president in 2008, a man of Kenyan and white European/American background, our society is still not ready to address its last unbroken taboo. As late as the 1960s, some Southern states, still kept anti-miscegenation laws on the books, making it illegal for a black and white to marry.

Social Taboos Thwart Cures for Cystic Fibrosis, Tay-Sachs, Sickle-Cell Anemia and other Genetic Disorders

One of the most heartbreaking perils of parenthood is the discovery that one's newborn carries such genetic markers for premature death as Cystic Fibrosis, Sickle Cell Anemia, or Tay-Sachs Disease. Life will always have risks. But the aforementioned disorders caused by the inheritance of matching recessive genes from both parents, may not have to be one of them, at least for future generations if not for present-day sufferers. The reason is a concept called "genetic distance," which corresponds to some degree with the geographical distance between diverse populations. In short, the term refers to the familial closeness or distance of any two people, with the greater genetic distance signifying that the two will share fewer of the same disorder-triggering recessive genes.

Medical knowledge of recessive genes, the disorders caused by them, and the risks of inbreeding have been known for decades. But what hasn't existed until now is the social freedom to choose one's spouse outside a narrow community of potential partners. Given the rich tapestry of American society, drawing immigrants from all over the world, the twenty first century offers the potential for physical health and mental vigor beyond anything our society has yet known. But we must first be willing to step outside our genetic neighborhood. Where the Nazis missed the boat was in believing that their ideology of racial inbreeding would lead to superior human beings. Fortunately for their descendants, the Aryan experiment was brought to an abrupt halt with their World War II defeat.

In recent years, medical practitioners have increasingly used genetic tests to ferret out matched pairs of recessive genes in an embryo or fetus for the benefit of couples fearing that their children will inherit a recessive gene disorder. But ruling out specific diseases is no guarantee that a couple will have a vigorously healthy child. Those positive odds only rise, and they do so exponentially, when two people come together from populations that are geographically and genetically distant from one another. In the meantime, researchers will continue to spend billions of dollars seeking better treatments for those suffering from genetic diseases, knowing that medical science is not even close to eradicating these disorders. But carrying around a good map of the world when deciding on a date just might.

Medical Biases that Sabotage the Health of Blacks & Latinos

My mother died of complications from breast cancer at the age of fifty-one. The doctors did all that they could for her. Well actually, they did all they could had she been of Northern European ancestry. Medical researchers are only now realizing that black women are less likely to get cancer than white women. However, when they do, that group is three times more likely to develop the aggressive, triple-negative form of breast cancer, which affects less than fifteen percent of white women. Given the type of cancer, which may be exacerbated by traditional treatment protocols, and many black women’s lack of access to adequate medical care, it is no wonder that African-American women suffer a breast cancer death rate (according to the Center for Disease Control), that is sixty percent higher than that of white women. It may have been too late for Mama, but present-day cancer specialists are finally beginning to recognize ethnic differences in breast cancers and adapt treatment protocols accordingly. If only ancestral factors were researched in other arenas of medicine and public health as well.

Most premature deaths among blacks, Latinos and Native Americans are caused by complications from such lifestyle diseases as obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure. But the medical community operates under the dictates of an unexamined paradigm, which I have come to call “Nordic universality.”

Whatever treatments and nutritional standards have been shown to work for people of Northern European origin are imposed on all other segments of America’s multi-ethnic population, no matter what the consequences. For instance, well-intentioned doctors encourage their black patients to consume more dairy products. However, elderly blacks seldom suffer from osteoporosis or low bone density, even though they have never drunk milk on account of lactose-intolerance (apart from in early childhood). It would make far more sense for the medical community to study young, healthy blacks (80% lactose-intolerant), Native Americans and Asians (99% lactose intolerant), Latinos (65% lactose-intolerant) and other non-dairy-consuming populations in order to learn how alternate physiological processes build strong bones. Instead, medical practitioners, backed by United States Department of Agriculture nutritional guidelines, scare conscientious parents into plying lactose-intolerant children, with high-fat, high-cholesterol dairy products to avoid calcium deficiency. It’s no wonder that obesity rates among African-American, Latino and Asian adoptee children have skyrocketed.

The role played by race in American society has diminished in recent years to the point where a black man now sits in the White House. Given that history, it seems almost un-American, some might argue, to begin pigeon-holing people on the basis of physiological or nutritional differences. This is especially so, given the uproar created by publication of the 1994 bestseller, The Bell Curve. Its authors, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, purported to show that racial differences exist in brain functioning, making whites cognitively superior to blacks.

However, the Human Genome Project has given biogeneticists irrefutable evidence that the concept of the three races (blacks, whites and Asians) is a fiction. What the genetic data does show is that the world is inhabited by fluid, overlapping, population groups, which number in the thousands. This is because our human biology adapts over time both to environmental conditions and the available nourishment. For people with darker skin in tropical climes, melanin acts as a protective biological shield against ultraviolet radiation. The Inuit of Northern Canada and Alaska have subsisted for thousands of years on a diet of whale blubber and seals, which is devoid of vegetables and grains. And yet they rarely suffer from the cardiovascular diseases associated with high-fat diets, which are endemic to western societies. People of Northern European ancestry, East Africans, and other dairy-consuming societies have evolved the genetic ability to produce lactase as adults, the enzyme needed to break down the lactose in dairy products. These traits are unknown in many areas of the world, including West Africa, where tsetse fly infestations made it all but impossible for the ancestors of African-Americans to breed dairy-producing beasts of burden.

The health care community needs to shake off the shadow of The Bell Curve and the racial exclusivity it has fostered. In doing so, it may finally begin grappling with the bio-diverse richness of American society. And even

FDA Guidelines May Increase Rate of Prostate Cancer in Black Males

Prostate Cancer Risk for Black Males

African-American males have the highest rate of prostate cancer in the world. The "why" of it may not be all that hard to fathom. But first let me say that West Africans, the genetic ancestors of black males, have an exceedingly low incidence of this disease. So, the problem appears to be some aspect of life in America that is altering this picture so drastically.

Recent studies have targeted an over-consumption of calcium as increasing the risk of prostate cancer in men. But why might this factor play a far more devastating role for black men as opposed to their white counterparts? The answer appears to lie in the fact that blacks process calcium more efficiently than do other groups. It is for this reason that African-Americans drink little milk, because of lactose intolerance, and yet have the strongest bone mineral density and lowest rate of osteoporosis of any ethnicity living in the United States. What this biological factor also means is that an over-consumption of calcium will occur in most black males at a lower intake of the mineral than would be the case with men of Northern European ancestry. But herein lies the problem.

Medical researchers in America have universalized the biology of Northern Europeans. That is, they use the needs and requirements of this one population group as a standard by which the nutritional needs of all other ethnicities will be measured. Whites suffer from osteoporosis, which is a calcium-deficiency disease. Blacks are at low risk of the disease, and yet the Food and Drug Administration sets the daily calcium requirement at the level considered most healthful for Whites. Not only will Blacks be over-consuming calcium if they follow these nutritional guidelines, but there is an even greater problem. Medical researchers have falsely concluded that blacks are calcium-deficient. Thus the message conveyed by the federal government and public health institutions is that African-Americans should force themselves to consume more dairy products, even when it makes them sick (on account of lactose intolerance). ©2016 Constance Hilliard - All Rights Reserved.

Clearly blacks are not calcium-deficient. But the pressure placed on them to consume more calcium now appears to be having a serious adverse effect. Their rate of prostate cancer is skyrocketing. So, why isn't anything being done about this?

Medical journals do not publish research that identify the deleterious effects of dairy calcium on lactose intolerant ethnic groups. It is not altogether their fault. There is no clinical research being conducted on this vital issue. As for why that is, it would be career suicide for researchers to pursue this kind of research. The funding agencies for medical research in this country have already determined that blacks are calcium-deficient. Why antagonize the goose that lays the golden egg?

Prostate cancer in Black males is really just a form of collateral damage caused by the dairy industry's control of federal nutritional guidelines. The popular "Got Milk" commercials in which celebrities were shown with milk mustaches was paid for by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a means of bolstering waning levels of milk consumption in America. The fact that a majority of Blacks, Native Americans, Ashkenazic Jews, and Latinos were lactose intolerant was ignored. Actually, the fact that their bodies do not require the high calcium intake of Northern Europeans has simply been labeled "a genetic defect."

Who then speaks for the health of blacks and other ethnic minorities in regard to these kinds of issues? The answer is no one. Even the national organization of black physicians who once warned about these problems, now proclaims (with the help of dairy industry support), that blacks are indeed calcium deficient and should be drinking more milk!

I wish I had an easy answer for a problem that is killing our fathers, brothers, husbands and loved ones. But folks I am just one person trying to convey a message that both contradicts the federal government and threatens to shame the multi-billion dollar medical and public health establishment for putting out dangerously false nutritional advice to minorities.

If you have any suggestions, I'm ready to listen.

For more detailed information you might be interested in reading the following report, which I have prepared: African-American Males, Dairy Calcium & Prostate Cancer: Critical Findings Report #2

RELATED POST: Is an Unacknowledged Eurocentric Paradigm Widening Ethnic Disparities in U.S. Health Care: Critical Findings Report #1

Thursday, October 6, 2016

USDA Salt Guidelines May Be Killing Blacks

The human body adapts slowly over time to the foodstuffs available in the environment. Such is also the case with salt. While coastal populations have always had excess to salt through sea brine, its availability to others has through history been defined by its geological availability and trade patterns.

For instance, medical researchers have had difficulties understanding the high rates of salt-sensitive high blood-pressure in African-Americans. This is because the assumption was that this population came from the coastal areas of West Africa. However, most African slaves shipped to the Americas came from the decentralized societies, which were located sometimes a thousand miles or more inland of the coast. These areas were geologically deficient in salt. Over the course of millennia, the bodies of these tropical farmers had adjusted to low-sodium levels by increasing the efficiency of their kidney functioning on lower salt levels. Upon arriving in the Americas, awash with salt and a sodium-rich diet, this population group has found such medical conditions as kidney disease and high-blood pressure skyrocket.

Do Chemical Hair Relaxers REALLY Cause Fibroids in Black Women?

Black women suffer from uterine fibroids at a rate that is two to three times greater than that of their white counterparts. Medical researchers have for years been stumped by the disparity. Then, an article appeared in a 2011 edition of the prestigious American Journal of Epidemiology. It asserted that the chemicals in hair relaxers used by African-American women to straighten their hair is the culprit.

Yes, we as black women should indeed lay off the relaxer for a whole host of reasons. But hoping to shrink uterine fibroids is not one of them.

Is an Unacknowledged Eurocentric Paradigm Widening Ethnic Disparities in U.S. Health Care?

African-Americans consume substantially less than the recommended daily intake of calcium and yet have the densest bone mass of any American ethnic group, and are at the lowest risk of osteoporosis, fragile bone disease and other calcium deficiency disorders. Studies have shown that this occurs because blacks have higher rates of calcium retention and greater calcium utilization efficiency than other ethnicities. So what public health message is given to black parents? It is that their children suffer from calcium deficiency and should therefore be fed more dairy products in order to prevent osteoporosis. But what might the implications be of pushing high sodium, high fat dairy products on a population that is not in need of supplemental calcium but that is suffering from skyrocketing rates of juvenile obesity and salt-sensitive hypertension? The medical response is that those ailments are probably caused by a calcium-deficiency as well.

Why Some Populations May Be Genetically Immune to Osteoporosis

As an evolutionary historian, I have devoted the last several years to researching the health implications of genetic diversity. I was particularly concerned with the tendency of medical researchers to unwittingly use the biology of people with Northern European ancestry as a universal standard for everyone. For instance, lactose intolerance may be a disorder in that community, which suffers high rates of osteoporosis. But since 65% of the world’s population are lactose intolerant and have low rates of osteoporosis, a one-size-fits-all approach to bone health can prove dangerous for those whose ethnic-specific biological needs are overlooked.

In June of 2016, I published an article in NATURE: BoneKEy, showing that osteoporosis is not a global problem. It has a strong and devastating impact in dairy-farming societies and is virtually non-existent in the tsetse zone of West Africa, where cattle rearing and dairying are not possible. Previous studies have tried to correlate the degenerative bone disease with socio-economic income. However, this study compares two regions of Africa with similar socio-economic conditions. In dairy-farming East Africa, the incidence of osteoporosis is 245 per 100,000. However in the tsetse belt of West Africa, where people do not consume dairy products, it is 3 per 100,000. When regression analyses are performed on 40 countries around the world, the association between dairy consumption and osteoporosis is high (0.851). It only correlates with national Gross National Product at a regression rate of 0.447.