[Woliff]

FYI

[buffyt]

I have been looking for this info for a couple of years. I was in the local paper, Houston Chronicle, and I misplaced it. But I remembered the theme of the article. My family is of European blood. Thank you for finding this and posting it. I think they have been doing a study of this for years.

[cyborg]

ping

[drt1]

Hmmm.. Good to know.

Note to Doctor - Can you give the patient another dose of the Anti-AIDS serum. It's in the bottle labeled 'Bubonic Plague'. Thanks.

[Bahbah]

Ebola is prevalent in Africa, but it doesn't seem to be helping much there.

[fat city]

Beware single scientific studies being accepted as law.

[JimSEA]

Professor Duncan and Dr Scott, authors of The Return of the Black Death, published last year, insist these plagues were not bubonic, but epidemics of viral haemorrhagic fever that used the CCR5 receptor as the "entry port" into the immune system.

Viral haemorrhagic fevers, including Ebola and, far more commonly, Dengue Fever are found currently in Africa and South / Southeast Asia, yet AIDS has a horrible impact in these areas? Do they not use the same receptor????

[Polybius]

The proportion of people carrying the natural resistance rises dramatically in Europe and particularly in Scandinavia, where the figure of those with resistance is 14-15per cent. But the mutation is relatively low in countries bordering the Mediterranean

Yet, the entry ports of the plague into Continental Europe were Mediterranean and Adriatic ports and the spread of the disease was from South to North from these ports.

[diamond6]

An interesting (but very sad) sideline... I'm reading a disturbing book re: Plagues and catastrophes as a result of God's justice. Its called Sent to Earth by Michael Brown, read it if you don't mind missing sleep.

[tortoise]

Europeans have pretty trashy genetics as people go, loads of different minor mutations in the population. Which is a good thing, as far as disease resistance goes.

[Truthsayer20]

And I thought it had been shown that there are no genetic differences between the races. </sarcasm>

[muawiyah]

In a large part of Scandinavia it's common for people to have to live cheek to jowel with rats and other rodents that carry the plague.

No doubt those folks developed a resistance to various rat borne diseases.