Posted on 09/21/2002 5:33:27 PM PDT by jstone78
Mutation Predisposes Many Jews to Cancer
Report September 19, 2002 05:57 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A common genetic mutation found in Jews of European descent can double or even triple the risk of colon cancer, U.S. and Israeli scientists reported on Thursday.
The mutation in a gene called BLM is found in about 1 percent of Ashkenazi Jews, who are closely related and descended from Jews who live or lived in Eastern Europe, the researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
"When this mutation is inherited from both parents, it causes a serious disorder called Bloom syndrome, which greatly increases an individual's predisposition to cancer," said Dr. Stephen Gruber, director of clinical cancer genetics at the University of Michigan.
"Our data show that people who inherit the mutation from just one parent face a two to three times greater risk for colorectal cancer," he said in a statement.
Working with Dr. Gad Rennert of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology Faculty of Medicine and Carmel Medical Center in Haifa, Israel, and a team at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, the researchers analyzed DNA from nearly 3,100 Ashkenazi Jews living in northern Israel and in New York City.
Almost 2 percent of the patients with colon cancer had the mutation, compared to fewer than 1 percent of those without cancer.
The study adds to findings about the genetic underpinnings of colon cancer. In 1991, Dr. Bert Vogelstein of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore found mutations in a gene called APC could cause colon cancer.
They used a new test this year to find the mutation in 61 percent of colon cancer patients and no healthy volunteers.
2. On the other hand, the godfathers of political correctness have forbidden research into how some races or ethnic groups differ genetically from others. Forbidding such research can have tragic health consequences.
3. For example, a group of Native Americans (Pima Indians), have a gene that causes them to gain weight more quickly than all other racial/ethnic groups in America. So do some Pacific Islanders. It is believed that the gene resulted a biological survival strategy, where their bodies developed the ability to retain fat more effectively, during long periods of hunger and drought. Today, because food shortages are not a problem, 90 percent of Pima Indians are obese. Diabetes rates are also very high in the group. Also, the Tay Sachs disease appears very frequently in Ashkenazi Jews, while sickle cell is more common among people of African origin. Research into those ailments cannot overlook ethnicity.
At least they are less likely to become alcoholics worrying about it.
Lineage of Jewish priests bolstered by DNA
By: Steven Hunt, April 25, 1997
According to Biblical tradition, Jewish law states there is no way to be promoted to be a priest. You only become a priest if your father was one - essentially carrying on a line of special inheritance from Aaron. Yet aside from oral tradition, there has never been a scientific means of positively identifying the Cohanim's separate status. That is until now.
The new analysis of two distinctly different groups of Jews - the Ashkenazic of Northern Europe and the Sephardic of North Africa and Iraq - suggests that, despite a geographical separation for over 1000 years, the Cohanim (or priests) in both populations share essentially the same DNA markers. What's more, the Cohanim - who often have the surname of Cohen - have distinctly different DNA material than the rest of the non-priestly Jewish population. According to Dr. Neil Bradman of the University College London, one of the principal researchers on the study, it all comes down to chromosomes.
[snip]
What the team has done... is establish that Cohanim are distinctly different from non-priests in their Y chromosome makeup. And they've been able to suggest that the Cohanim's genetic differences must have originated prior to 1,000 years ago when the Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews became substantially separated.
Gotta be real careful what you believe about genetic "testing". There has been a lot of apparent fraud in the search for a "Jewish Gene". Do a search of FR threads under "gene", "genetics", etc. and find at least a dozen prior threads which point out some of the problems.
Thanks for the warning.
I'm more than willing to let the scientists "duke it out" and to watch for the judges' decisions from the sidelines.
It will probably sort itself out in the end.
I'm into anthropology, I listen to all sides and fight with none about it.
I think we can safely bet on that one! {ggg}.
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