Posted on 07/02/2010 11:55:56 PM PDT by wac3rd
People in developing countries have lower IQs because their bodies divert energy from brainpower to fighting disease, researchers claimed today.
In hot nations blighted by deadly infections, the priority is survival and populations have evolved to develop stronger immune systems rather than intelligence, according to the controversial theory.
Some critics warned the study could become an excuse for racism if it was used to suggest that people in the Third World are not as intelligent as those in cooler, richer climes.
Others pointed out that the ancient Persians, Greeks and Romans lived in hot climates and still boasted extraordinary civilisations. U.S. researchers claimed their work could explain why national IQ scores vary around the world and are lower in some warmer countries stricken by diseases such as malaria, tetanus and tuberculosis.
Infection could have as important an impact on intelligence as education, diet and wealth, said researcher Randy Thornhill and a team from the University of New Mexico. Children under five use most of their energy for brain development and this can be restricted if the body has to fight disease, they wrote in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. They compared data from worldwide IQ studies with disease maps drawn up by the World Health Organisation and concluded that the higher the level of infectious disease in a country, the lower the average national IQ.
'The effect of infectious disease on IQ is bigger than any other single factor we looked at,' said Chris Eppig, lead author on the paper. Disease is a major sap on the body's energy, and the brain takes a lot of energy to build. If you don't have enough, you can't do it properly. (snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I had no idea that people could even survive on a diet of potato chips and Coke, let alone have babies. These kids had been given all sorts of supplemental welfare payments, free vitamin supplements, etc. They didn’t take the vitamins and they didn’t use the money to buy food. They said it was too much trouble to cook and nobody cooked in their homes. They all sounded and acted as if they had what are politely called “developmental disabilities” themselves. I was pretty stunned.<
It's criminal that schools have done away with home economics classes in favor of feminism and political correctness. If teenagers were introduced to cooking and nutrition in a group setting perhaps, just perhaps, they'd learn that nutritious food is not only vital, but it tastes really good.
Hey, your IQ goes down if you just gotta have that Double Big-Mac Bacon Burger with a six pack of Papst Blue Ribbon.....right now!
But aren't most populations in poor developing tropical nations subsisting on traditional diets?
Aren't "traditional" diets supposed to be superior???
And all these tropical populations are OBVIOUSLY super super super healthy, because most of them get LOTS of sun, and therefore their blood Vitamin D levels are super high ---- just open any FR thread about Vitamin D, and you'll learn that lack thereof is responsible for ALL ills, ALL cancers, etc/etc/etc.
It's poverty, not heat." <<<<<
Age 4? Were they given IQ tests and then tested again at, say, age 10?? I thought that IQ was developed VERY young in life? I thought IQ was a constant?
What does this thesis of your sister's say about programs such as Head Start, or about the subsidized school lunch program???
Are there any scientific studies to back up her impressions of the local population during her time in the Peace Corps?
I want to throw everyone a two curveballs.
What is the explanation of the white farmers in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), South Africa and other African nations that no longer have slave labor or aparteid?
Two: Communist countries which have little food and medicine due to shortages and usurping of resources by the Government still produce science, math and technology advances (see USSR, China, N. Korea).
I mean the myth that we are all equal, and that racism is the reason for differences, and that measuring intelligence is racist because there is no such thing.
Honestly, The Bell Curve is an excellent book worth an enjoyable read.
Traditional diets are not necessarily healthier than a good modern diet, although they will keep people alive unless something (like the local Communist/Islamic dictatorship) interrupts the food supply.
One of the big lacks in a lot of traditional diets is protein, either because it is actually unavailable (shortage of animal protein) or because it is artificially limited (for example, European peasants being forbidden to hunt game because the landlord wanted it all).
I agree. I went to school in NYC, and while I didn’t come from a “non-cooking household,” I enjoyed our home ec classes in jr high school.
We had little kitchens in the classroom, and we were assigned in groups of 4: 2 boys and 2 girls. We learned to make basic dishes, and even if you already knew how to cook or thought the dishes were horrible, the class was fun, although it was usually the girls who did all the cooking. The boys set the table and occasionally brought the girls things they had made in metal shop.
The school I went to was about 1/3 Northern European white, 1/3 Caribbean Hispanic (who can be any color), and 1/3 African American. We all enjoyed the class.
Our teacher was a black woman who said that it was her mission to teach kids that cooking was more than just a boring duty. I remember we spent a lot of time decorating with paprika.
The academic elite walk a fine line on this. Publicly, they claim that IQ testing is very subjective, and it's impossible to really determine IQ accurately. Privately, they know approximately how much to correct for different social and cultural factors and still get a measure of IQ with reasonable accuracy.
1. It’s anecdotal and old, but she was a teacher and that was the thought among the teachers there at that time. You don’t have to jump all over it (unless you want to.)
2. Who says IQ is constant? I’m no expert (as you are acutely aware), but it seems like bad health could take it down. Don’t you know people who’s health is run down and they can’t think like they used to?
3. Re: Head Start or school lunch— I’d guess regular meals will help you learn. Also, I read that kids who take vitamins score higher on tests. The bummer is that the families who are providing vitamins are also most likely to provide a diet that already contains plenty of vitamins in the food. Those who are poorly feeding their kids don’t give them vitamins, either.
4. The La Leche League people, after some study, insist that a full course of breast feeding is worth an extra 8 IQ points. Obviously, you don’t receive the 8 points in a package on the day you are weaned. The points had to be building up while you were accumulating the nourishment. So there has to be some movement in IQ.
Your example indicates expertise in different fields, which confuses the point. We are all ignorant in some area. Measuring IQ is measuring the ability of someone to learn, not the level of expertise they have in a certain field. The two individuals you discuss may well have the same IQ.
Training can correct for some IQ differences. There's a saying in football. A good big man will beat a good small man. If Michael Jordan had never played basketball in his life, and I had practiced every day of my life, I'd probably beat him. However, if we both practiced the same amount, he'd beat me ten times out of ten.
I love anecdotal firsthand accounts, and I know NOTHING about IQ, but the points you're sharing are truly interesting, and I'm utterly unfamiliar with them.
Indeed, the ONLY thing I know remotely about this is that protein is supposed to be superior brain food. But.... that it is a fruit, BLUEBERRIES, which seem to be superb in preventing damage from strokes.
Elsewise, I know NOTHING, and it intrigues me that someone who LIVED there PERSONALLY had such an interesting firsthand account. I wonder if our American children would all be far healthier if they were all breastfed and not weaned for several years?
I'm trying to remember what I read about the switch from Paleolithic Caveman Diets of MEAT & FISH to agrarian plant based diets of early civilization -- I'm positive something was said about its impact on the brain????
I would think that political correctness would destroy the data base for the last couple of decades. Not just for race; but, the accommodation of Feminism and Socialism and the illogic of new age religions.
Researchers need to keep double books!
They do keep double books. They also use quite a bit of double speak and newthink to hide their actual beliefs and goals. When The Bell Curve came out, it was attacked by both academia and the popular press. The given reason was that it was "racist" for pointing out that on average, blacks are approximately one standard deviation below whites on the IQ scale. It also noted that Oriental Asians test highest, followed by Jews, Anglos, Hispanics and Blacks.
The book revealed the thinking in academia, and made a lot of things clear to me. This wasn't because the book said so, but because I could observe public policy decisions and the thought template only made sense if I applied the motivations claimed in the book. For shorthand, I'll use the term "controllers" to describe the people in academia, politics, etc., who push the agenda.
The controllers are concerned about several things:
1. Lower IQ people have more children and start reproducing at a younger age. A high IQ woman who enters into a profession may have one child at age 36. A low IQ woman may have the first of five children at age 16, and her first daughter is having a child by the time the high IQ woman is having her first child.
2. Advanced societies are becoming more segregated by IQ. Racism kept high IQ Blacks in the Black community, where they provided societal stabilization. Now, high IQ Blacks leave the Black community, leaving behind an increasingly low IQ and less productive Black community. This can be seen in inner cities like Detroit.
3. Increased opportunities for women are having a similar effect as the fall of racial barriers. Where a successful man used to look for a "good wife," he is now more likely to marry a colleague. Doctors marry doctors, lawyers marry lawyers, shop clerks marry shop clerks.
4. Colleges rely much more on competitive (IQ) testing than they did in the past. When Harvard started doing entrances by IQ testing, as opposed to the previous "legacy" method, over a four year period, the average student from the first year would have been at the bottom of the class if he'd entered four years later.
5. They consider this segregation by IQ to be a bad thing. As racial, religious and gender barriers have fallen, the new method of segregation is by IQ, resulting in a distinct two class system, where one class is increasingly rich and successful and the other is increasingly poor and unsuccessful.
A few of their solutions:
1. Reduce the number of low IQ births. This is why Planned Parenthood has most of their clinics in minority neighborhoods. It's also why the UN steadfastly pushes for abortion and birth control in third world countries.
2. Require companies and colleges to accept some less qualified applicants, reducing the polarization by IQ by creating a cross section of IQs within the individual groups. IQ testing for jobs is illegal. Colleges now frequently consider other factors besides testing and high school accomplishments. Financial aid is now almost entirely "need based," whereas it used to be almost entirely performance based. Current employment laws encourage employers to set the application bar at "good enough to do the needed job" rather than hiring the best applicant. If we use math skills as an example, previously, an employer would make a test with problems from extremely simple to problems far more complex than the job required. They would then hire the best test score based on the premise that a person that could do the higher math would make fewer mistakes than the person who could only do the level of math required for the job. Now, the questions must be "job related." This means that the test only requires math capability commensurate with the job being offered. By setting the test as pass/fail, a candidate that writes 70 and an applicant that writes 100 both pass and move into the "acceptable job pool." At that point, hiring is done by factors other than capability, giving a lower IQ candidate a similar shot as a higher IQ candidate.
The reason some of the employment laws seem so crazy is because the "controllers" cannot be honest about their true agenda. If you apply the template I offered at the beginning of this post, it all comes into focus.
Sounds just like the thinking I first started to notice with George McGovern and his concerns with over population and meat eating.
A version of the same old agenda that dictators have always had - and the reason Americans are losing their liberty and China is short of women. That’s what a high IQ gets you!
Mine is a Christian view. In recent years it’s been clear to me that the wages of sin is death, and stupidity. And not just stupidity, but pure illogic. If we can have honesty (which comes from God) we can then have common sense. Common sense, to me, is the true measure of intelligence.
Yes, breast-fed kids would be significantly healthier. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a full year, the World Health Organization recommends two years. In some countries, weaning is at 4 or 5. (A family member knew someone from South America who could remember pulling up a chair to nurse.) I don’t expect that will ever catch on in America, though, and I’m glad my kids didn’t go that long! Kids start “solid” food by the end of their first year, so in the older years, it’s just maybe a morning or nighttime feeding, or something.
The fat in the milk helps the insulation on the nerve cells to form well, which keeps happening up until kids are four or five. For American kids, they should be drinking cows milk with fat, like 2%, when they are in the preschool years. In poor countries, the safest milk they could have is breast milk, so it makes sense to keep supplementing with it, through pre-school.
The other benefit to breastfeeding is in the mother-child relationship. Children who have that intimacy with mom, trust her and learn from her. Our LLL leader, whose kids were in jr. hi and high school, said that benefit continued through the teen years. Adults who do the “attachment parenting” that goes with being available to nurse become more committed parents. (There’s a hormone released during nursing that increases maternal feelings.)
Also La Leche League says that breastfed babies are less likely to grow up to be obese. They have a statistic on that, but I’ve forgotten it.
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