Re: Cheating Destiny (book excerpt)
[ Follow-Ups ]
[ Post Followup ]
[ The Islet Foundation Message Forum ]
[ FAQ ]
Posted by klausen on 08:26:44 2006/07/12
In Reply to:
Re: Cheating Destiny (book excerpt) posted by Marie
While it is true that some cases of type 1 diabetes emerge in people who have no family history of the disease, most cases do shou such a background. While it is also true that some people don't know about their genetic risk before having children, most do, and those were the ones we were talking about.
It is also not true that disease cannot be conquered by breeding it out of the gene pool. There has been a measurable rise in the rate of type 1 diabetes after the discovery of insulin therapy allowed type 1 diabetics to breed. Conversely, other diseases have been either partially or totally eradicated by being bred out. The decline in tuberculosis, for example, is thought to have been in part caused by the tubercolosis epidemic of the 19th century wiping out many people with the somatotype making them more susceptible to the disease. When the first cases of syphilis appeared in Europe in the 16th century, the disease was so virulent it killed people in a few months. The reason why it was taking 30 years to kill people by the 20th century was that the human race had been selectively bred over many generations to become ever more resistant to the disease. Sickle cell anemia is a rare genetic mutation in most of the world, but in Western Africa it became a selective advantage because of its protective action against malaria, so there is now a very large proportion of that population with that genetic characteristic. Anyone who has ever dealt in animal husbandry knows how much breeding is directed to getting rid of inherited disease in certain stocks of animals, and there is no reason why humans should be exempt from this effect.
With type 1 males having a 7% risk of diabetic children, and type 1 females having a 4% risk, there could be a very dramatic fall in the total future type 1 population if the reproductive fitness of type 1 patients were to be voluntarily reduced to zero. If families with a heavy genetic loading for type 1 diabetes stopped reproducing, the results could be even more dramatic. The cure for diabetes exists, and we, the diabetics, who complain most about it, are the only ones who have that cure, and yet we persist in keeping it alive, generation after generation.
Follow Ups:
Post a Followup
[ Follow Ups ]
[ Post Followup ]
[ The Islet Foundation Message Forum ]
[ FAQ ]