New York – The question had been gnawing at Gregory Cochran for years: Why are European Jews prone to so many deadly genetic diseases?
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Natural selection, the self-taught genetics buff knew, should flush dangerous DNA from the gene pool. Could the mutations causing these diseases have some benefit?
After a long night of research in his Albuquerque office, it hit him: Those “bad” genes make Jews smarter.
That provocative – some would say inflammatory – hypothesis has landed Cochran and collaborator Henry Harpending, University of Utah professor of anthropology, in a charged debate about IQ and DNA. Their book describing the theory, The 10,000 Year Explosion, came out in February.
The Ashkenazi diseases include Tay-Sachs, a neurological disorder that debilitates children and usually kills them by age 4; and Canavan disease, which turns the brain into spongy tissue and typically claims its victims by age 5.
Many Jewish diseases involve problems with fat molecules called sphingolipids that transmit nerve signals. Of our more than 20,000 genes, only 108 are known to be involved in sphingolipid metabolism. Cochran calculated the odds of Ashkenazi Jews having four sphingolipid storage disorders by random chance are less than 1 in 100,000.
Cochran and Harpending came to believe that this was an example of heterozygote advantage – where having two copies of a mutated gene can mean disaster but one copy is helpful.
The most famous example of this is sickle cell anemia, which strikes people of African descent who have two defective copies of the hemoglobin B gene. As a result, they make red blood cells that are too curvy to carry oxygen to critical organs.
People who have only one bad copy make useful red blood cells that are deformed just enough to protect them from the malaria parasite, insulating them against the disease.
Instead of sickle cell anemia, Ashkenazi Jews had to contend with diseases like Tay-Sachs. Instead of malaria resistance, the pair reasoned, Jews got an IQ boost.
Some scientists say the theory is unworthy of consideration.
“What are their theories about those on the opposite end of the spectrum?” said Neil Risch, director of the Institute for Human Genetics at UC San Francisco. “Do they have genetic theories about why Latinos and African Americans perform worse academically?” But Cochran, 55, and Harpending, 65, say there’s no question Ashkenazi Jews have an abundance of brain power.
Researchers have pegged their average IQ at between 107.5 and 115. That’s only modestly higher than the European average of 100, but statistically, it’s enough to boost the number of geniuses nearly six-fold.
But is this only for jews who learn torah or even those that don’t learn have a higher iq?
My Cardioligist has conducted a study of Askenazi Jews and their lack of “Good” cholestorol- he has concluded that Ashkenazim for some reason are defficient in this vital component- he has put me on Niaspan- a slow release form of Niacin and my numbers have improved B”H by 40%!
stop it with the “jews are smarter then everybody” garbage. If your frum and believe in torah then you have to be that jews are special because of mitzvos that we do and the torah that we learn. If your not frum then you for sure wouldn’t won’t to swallow these kinds of shallow studies. (what about a time not to long ago when genetic scientists were producing theories that “proved” jewish INFERIORITY? )
I remember being told in yeshivah , that Einstein and Freud and Marx etc proved how special we are as a people because they influenced the entire 21st century. THIS IS HYPOCRISY. How can you walk around saying what kind of nothings frei people are, and then turn around and take credit for their accomplishments!
Great. Now we got a an illness for smarts
What about Sephardic Jews? Don’t they have an equal abundance of above average IQ as well?
All we can say is that everything in HaShem’s hands have a good thing in them, even if it means staying up late to find it….Diseases are Not bad, they are there for a reason….
We guess Moshiach is coming….Readers and commentors, please share your input….. I will love to hear them….Have a wonderful Vacht….
#5 who is the cardiologist
I read one study that said that 1 in 1000 have an IQ over 150, but for Asheknazic Jewry the statistic is 1 in 100.
The theory of the report was that Ashkenazic Jews were repeatedly discriminated against over the centuries and were not given blue collared jobs. Therefore the only families to survive were the ones with high IQs where the family members were able to fill jobs requiring brain power.
Less intelegent families couldn’t survive past a few generations and the gene pool consisted of families with higher than average IQs.
(This is why it applies to Ashkenazim and not Sephardim.)
I don’t know, I interact with a lot of frum menchen who are of average intelligence or maybe even below average intelligence. I think this is what happens when a “soft” scientist tries to do “hard” sciemce. Let him try to publish this shtuss in a peer reviewed journal.
People dear! leave off this stuff, go to work and build up your iq’s. about the diseases it’s all b’yad Hashem. we are maaminim b’nei maaminim.
Anytime they start classifying races with genetics could lead to trouble. One day they may classifiy Jews negatively. The whole thing is foolish.
It would be interesting to see why our cousins living in Islamic lands seem to have a deficiency in …