Race - the Power of Illusion a Review

The PBS Program Race the Power of Illusion is a series that provides lessons plans for teachers' grade 9-14. Race issues are exemplified by more ambiguous assumptions and myths, each voiced with utter conviction. According to the Executive Statement, producing this series was important to go back to first principles and ask what this thing is called "race?" The question is described as being so basic it is hardly ever asked. The Human Genome Project answered most of the question. The Project was produced by the National Institutes of Health, National Human Genome Research Institute - "an international research effort to sequence and map all of the genes - together known as the genome - of members of our species, Homo sapiens." The only race is the Human Race.

The series is an online component to California Newsreel - three part documentary about race in society, history and science. The episodes include The Difference Between Us, The Story We Tell and The House We Live In. The program equips the student with background reading, ask the expert and resources.

The Empirical Challenges of Racial Classification is part of the PBS Program developed by Scott Bronson. It provides lesson plans and resources for teachers to aid students examine their preconceptions and assumptions about racial categories and understand the impossibility of constructing a consistent system of human racial classification. ACTIVITY #4: Why Racial Classification Doesn't Work - Understanding Gradual Variation, Non-Concordance and Within- vs. Between-Group Variation includes film clips for the students to view. To view a complete transcript of the episode, click here. One of the handouts is related to sickle cell disease.

Sickle cell disease is an inherited disorder that affects red blood cells. Sickle cell disease affects more than 72,000 Americans, primarily those of African heritage, but also those of Arabian, Asian, Caribbean, Indian, Italian Spanish-Mediterranean, and South and Central American descent. Sickle Cell Handout listed below shows how one group of people migrating from a central location can develop a gene mutation that's passed from generation to generation.

A study investigates distinct letter transform in our genetic code that affects the ability of genes to produce proteins was published February 5, 2009 in The American Journal of Human Genetics. The investigators' conclusions propose that such mutations, while sometimes harmful, generally have little effect for the entity and may from time to time even be beneficial in evolutionary terms. According to the article, 1 in 200 of our human genes can be turned off with no obvious consequence on our health. A study by Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute investigators raises new inquiries regarding the effects of gene loss on our welfare and evolution. The DNA sequence of a gene can be altered in a number of ways. There are many types of mutations.

Sickle cell anemia is a hereditary disease that arises from a single mutation (SNP or single nucleotide polymorphism) in one of the genes that code for the hemoglobin protein in our red blood cells. Hemoglobin carries oxygen through the bloodstream to the body.

People who inherit two copies of the mutated hemoglobin gene, one from each parent, get sickle cell anemia. Their red blood cells become sticky and stiff and sometimes become sickle shaped. These "sickled" cells tend to get stuck in the narrow blood vessels known as capillaries, blocking the flow of blood. Sickle cell anemia is a very painful disease and can be life threatening.

But the larger numbers of people who inherit just a single copy of the mutated gene are known as sickle-cell carriers. They usually don't become anemic and interestingly, sickle cell carriers tend to be resistant to malaria, a deadly disease.

Malaria is caused by a parasite carried by the Anopheles mosquito. After humans started practicing agriculture, the mosquito thrived in standing pools of water that appeared on the cleared land. Scientists believe that the sickle cell mutation arose independently four or five different times in human history, no more than 10,000 years ago and probably much more recently. Because carrying one sickle cell gene conferred a survival advantage in areas of the world where malaria was common, the sickle cell mutation was positively selected and passed on in those regions.

As humans migrated, the sickle cell trait spread, not by contagion, of course, but through reproduction. Population geneticists call it 'gene flow' when a gene variant like sickle cell passes from one population to another. As a result of these historical and environmental influences, sickle cell is commonly found in central and western Africa, but not Southern Africa. It is also found on the Arabian Peninsula and over into India, as well as up through Turkey, Greece, Albania, Sicily and Italy and other parts of the Mediterranean basin.

Carrying the sickle cell variant of the hemoglobin gene, therefore, is a marker not of race, but of descent from people who once lived where malaria was common.

According to CDC malaria is a mosquito-borne disease caused by a parasite. If not treated, people may develop severe complications and die. CDC says each year 350-500 million cases of malaria occur worldwide, and over one million people die, most of them young children in Africa south of the Sahara.

This sometimes fatal disease can be prevented and cured. "Because carrying one sickle cell gene conferred a survival advantage in areas of the world where malaria was common, the sickle cell mutation was positively selected and passed on in those regions."

Gene flow increases genetic difference within a populace. This raise happens because persons from other populations will transport alleles from one population to another. Gene flow affects resemblances and distinctions among populations. Gene flow has a predisposition to make populations genetically related to each other when it occurs, the alleles that crops up in one populace will be introduced to the other populace. The more gene flow arises, the more akin the populations will become.

Most of our widespread postulations about race are wrong. The world's people are not divided biologically along racial lines. In that sense what notions about race do we all hold.

The consequences of racism are very real. The PBS Program states that they wish this series can assist in clearing away the "biological underbrush" and leave plainly traceable core social, economic, and political circumstances that inexplicably direct compensations and chances to "white people."

Work Cited:

http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-teachers-04.htm

http://www.genome.gov/10001772

http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/handbook/mutationsanddisorders/possiblemutations

http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/blood/sickle/sca_fact.pdf)

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/09/g68/tgmigration.html