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鴨 寮 [ 首頁 ] [ 小說館 ] [ 特約作家區 ] [ 心理測驗 ] [ 談笑風生 ] |
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翻譯雜感 yahoo的健康新聞 敬啟者,新聞台空著也是空著,最近因為生活不順遂所以寫不出好東西的台長在下我決定翻譯一些東西來玩玩 如果有錯誤的話敬請指教, *********************************** 最近從yahoo看來的健康新聞 NEW YORK - A university plans to seek DNA from 25,000 people of African descent. A company is developing a heart drug specifically for people of one race. Scientists hope to study thousands of American blacks in search of genes related to schizophrenia. In a country that calls itself a melting pot, some researchers say it's critical to categorize people by race for some biomedical research — and others say that's simply a bad idea. The issue resurfaced recently when genetic researchers at Howard University in Washington, D.C., proposed building a collection of DNA and other information from 25,000 people of African descent. They say that will help the search for genes and non-genetic factors that explain why American blacks run elevated rates of such diseases as high blood pressure, prostate cancer (news - web sites), obesity, asthma and diabetes. The Howard researchers aren't alone at the crossroads of biological science and race. A company called NitroMed Inc. of Bedford, Massachusetts, is developing an experimental heart-failure drug called BiDil just for blacks. It has launched a study in 1,100 patients to follow up on prior research that indicated the drug works best in blacks. It's not clear why that's so, but NitroMed is collecting genetic data from study participants to look for clues, said CEO Michael Loberg. Elsewhere, scientists are seeking about 1,300 black Americans with schizophrenia and 5,000 of their relatives to look for genes that predispose people to the disease. The federally funded study focuses on American blacks because the unusually wide diversity in their DNA should make locating genes easier, said Rodney Go of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, a leader of the project. To keep all this in perspective, it helps to realize that the DNA of any two people of the same sex, no matter what race, is overwhelmingly the same. It's about 99.9 percent alike. In fact, scientists say it's quite possible for the DNA of two people of different races to bear a stronger resemblance than that of two members of the same race. Research shows that the amount of DNA variation within a continent — Africa, Asia or Europe, for example — is far greater than the variation between continents, by about 9 to 1. The whole concept of race has been criticized by many scientists. It's merely a social invention and "biologically meaningless," a 2001 editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine (news - web sites) declared. The American Anthropological Association in 1998 stressed that neighboring populations interbreed and that physical traits tend to vary gradually rather than abruptly over geographic areas. Moreover, one trait, such as dark skin, doesn't unerringly predict the presence of others, like hair texture, the association said. So "any attempt to establish lines of division among biological populations (is) both arbitrary and subjective," the association said. In fact, "most of what's coming out of modern human genetics now tells us ... we are all genetically similar, and there is a tremendous degree of overlap. There aren't nice, neat categories you can put people into," says University of Utah geneticist Lynn Jorde. But he also says there's more to the story. Scientists have identified patterns of genetic markers that can reveal a person's geographic ancestry — a term they prefer to "race," which they say is ambiguously defined and connotes social aspects as well as biology. ********************************** 之前上遺傳學的時候,教授提到遺傳學在20世紀初,背了不少的黑鍋,其實這個應該要從達爾文說起,自從'物種原始'一書出版,'演化'的概念被社會學飲用變成'進化',後者與前者的差異在於牽涉到孰好孰壞的價值判斷,接下來掌握社會資源的或是有心利用者,當然會把敵人或是假想敵打為該'不適者淘汰'的黑五類,所以包括黑人歧視 反猷 始終不得平反 當然,這些歷史在台灣看來都不是我們的問題,不過另一個方面來說,相對於台灣這個小鎔爐更大的美國民族大鎔爐能夠思索這些問題 |
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