I think I heard indigenous people being verballed this morning. Professor Martin Silink said on Fran Kelly's RN Breakfast program http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2006/1786920.htm that one reason for the high incidence of diabetes in indigenous populations was genetics.

For a second I thought he must have been referring just to Australian Aborigines, but he proceeded to rope in Micronesians, Polynesians and Native Americans. I'd like to know what genetic trait he thinks that these peoples all have in common that makes them susceptible to diabetes and which isn't shared with the rest of us. Each group has a quite distinct genetic heritage. This seems to be a classic case of confusing colour and race.

It also seemed more than a little patronising when he and Fran went on about re-establishing traditional diets, as though all of these peoples are habitat bound, but the rest of mankind isn't. Just because your parents ate it doesn't mean it's the best for you. I don't eat my Anglo culture's stodgy, fatty traditional fare, and I'm much better for it.

I would have thought that the reason these populations have high rates of diabetes is because of woeful diets caused by a combination of low socio-economic status, cost of food in remote communities, poor education levels and habit, all of which are treatable in some way or another. It almost sounds like a more sophisticated version of "they just can't hold their drink...".

Racialising the cause of a health problem is unlikely to lead to workable solutions.

Good question GY, my understanding is that it’s about susceptibility to diabetes rather that am inherent genetic flaw that all Indigenous people have. The same susceptibility can and does exist in all so called races. In my own community the prevalence of diabetes in some families is higher than others and yet genetically we could well share the same genetic areas in our genetic makeup.

However, you are correct to say that he should not have thrown all indigneous people together in one basket. The illusion of race plays out again.

Quote " Epidemiological evidence implicates genetic factors in the susceptibility of indigenous Australians to type 2 diabetes and supports the hypothesis of the "thrifty genotype," but, to date, the nature of the genetic predisposition is unknown."
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?id=doi:10.1086/338626&erFrom=7974175220678068414Guest

This simply means they only suspect it to be genetic in the absence of better science.

I'll chase down the transcript from that program and get back to yo

Thanks Rainier. Thought you'd be interested. My Mum's got Type 2, and her family was indigenous to Cornwall - not sure what that says! ;-)

I think what was actually meant was that when a different race (other than whites) takes on a whiteman's diet, their DNA can't cope. Whiteman's diet is high in processed food and refined (ruined) sugars,flours and salts, not to speak about sodium nitrites bathing of most meats.It's killing whites and it is killing other races a bit quicker.This might be a too simple an explanation, but most things about food ,diet and exercise are simple. The races closest to "hunters and gatherers" soon got perverted by missionaries to take on their so different lifestyle. In fact I believe that the whiteman's DNA is being threatened by so many chemicals in our foodchain all in the name of progress?

Just my dose of vit C

5 THINGS EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT RACE (USA context, but relevant here as well) http://www.pbs.org/race/001_WhatIsRace/001_00-home.htm

Our eyes tell us that people look different. No one has trouble distinguishing a Czech from a Chinese. But what do those differences mean? Are they biological? Has race always been with us? How does race affect people today?

There's less - and more - to race than meets the eye:

1. Race is a modern idea. Ancient societies, like the Greeks, did not divide people according to physical distinctions, but according to religion, status, class, even language. The English language didn't even have the word 'race' until it turns up in 1508 in a poem by William Dunbar referring to a line of kings.

2. Race has no genetic basis. Not one characteristic, trait or even gene distinguishes all the members of one so-called race from all the members of another so-called race.

3. Human subspecies don't exist. Unlike many animals, modern humans simply haven't been around long enough or isolated enough to evolve into separate subspecies or races. Despite surface appearances, we are one of the most similar of all species.

4. Skin color really is only skin deep. Most traits are inherited independently from one another. The genes influencing skin color have nothing to do with the genes influencing hair form, eye shape, blood type, musical talent, athletic ability or forms of intelligence. Knowing someone's skin color doesn't necessarily tell you anything else about him or her.

5. Most variation is within, not between, "races." Of the small amount of total human variation, 85% exists within any local population, be they Italians, Kurds, Koreans or Cherokees. About 94% can be found within any continent. That means two random Koreans may be as genetically different as a Korean and an Italian

Can of worms of a thread, GrahamY, and I take Rainer’s point about race being an artificial construct when thinking about groups of people. “Racial” differentiation in humans is mostly trivial (and mostly superficial), biologically speaking.

But the reality is that there is a fair range of genetic susceptibility to disease, and “race” is one of the identifiers we use in targeting sub-populations at increased risk of a whole variety of diseases. Age is another, as is gender. Some diseases are entirely genetic, while in others genetic susceptibility plays no role at all. For many others, and type 2 diabetes is one, genetic susceptibility plays a partial role. Though it’s often difficult to separate this from other elements such as social deprivation and other “lifestyle” factors, it is sometimes reasonable to target groups of people on “racial” grounds in preventive health initiatives, screening programs, and in the design of treatment programs. Race is certainly a dodgy concept for making judgments about intelligence, social abilities and human potential, but it provides a useful shorthand for broad patterns of genetic susceptibility to a variety of medical conditions.

An obvious example of a genetic susceptibility to disease that has a “racial” basis is skin cancer in Australia. Light skinned Australians (whose genetic forebears selected themselves in regions of lower levels of sunlight) are genetically at far greater risk of skin cancers than dark skinned Australians.

One area where genetic susceptibility is very prominent is in the area of infectious diseases. People whose ancestors lived in the great Eurasian landmass have inherited a degree of immunity to many common human infections that people in isolated areas (like Australia or some Pacific Islands) had never been exposed to. The reason for this is that individuals without that inherited immunity in Eurasia got knocked off over years and generations by the diseases that circulated with relentlessly cruel regularity through that landmass. When Eurasians (the genetic survivors of countless Eurasian epidemics) brought diseases like measles, smallpox and influenza to places like Australia that had not previously experienced these epidemics the results were devastating to the local people.