Posted by
Mike on Sunday, April 19, 2009 1:29:31 PM
http://westernperspective.blogspot.com/
An article on the front page of
yesterday's Los Angeles Times
highlights recent studies done by Gregorgy Cochran and Henry Harpending on the correlation between childhood neurological disorders and high IQ levels among Ashkenazi Jews. The basic premise of their hypothesis first published in 2005 is that certain mutations affecting sphingolipids, the fat molecules that transmit nerve signals, are the cause of the neurological disorders when inherited from both parents together, and also have a heterozygote advantage when transmitted by only one of the parents. Their findings are partly based on the improbability of all four childhood neurological disorders common within the Ashkenzai Jewish population occurring randomly in a population of that size. The heterozygote advantage is analogous to the genes causing sickle cell anemia among persons of African descent. The negative effects occur only upon transmission of the genetic code by both parents together, and when transmitted by only one parent the positive effect is a higher resistance to malaria. The hypothesis goes on to state that the genetic mutation was passed down through succeeding generations because the individuals with greater intelligence levels were more successful and had more children as compared with the population as a whole.
Carrying this back into prehistory, one wonders whether the mutation occurred within a population of Central Asia among which there were converts to Judaism, insofar as the phenomena of higher incidence of childhood neurological disorders coupled with higher intelligence levels is not found among the Sephardic Jews of North Africa, Spain and Portugal, and their descendants among the diaspora.
This hypothesis could easily be tested by checking to see whether the genetic characteristics associated with the sphingolipid mutations are present in Ashkenazim Jewish children who have higher IQ levels, and absent in their siblings with relatively lower IQ levels. One objection to this methodology is that taking IQ tests for this purpose is not a legitimate object for scientific exploration.
If this be the case, shouldn't we also ask the question of whether experimentation on live human embryos, which is unethical because it kills living human beings, is also outside the realm of legitimate scientific inquiry?
In this context, it is somewhat ironic and puzzling that President Obama has quoted the Hippocratic Oath pledge to "first do no harm" in relation to the state of the national economy, while himself being a staunch supporter of so'called "abortion rights" and embryonic stem cell research.