General Chat

as detrimental to health, this is a 'possible' case where it might not have been...

"Scientists will study stem cells of New York Jews with East European roots in a bid to work out what is the secret to their longevity - many live to 100.

Many of the close-knit group reach a ton in age despite the fact that many drink, smoke and eat fatty food - and now experts are hoping to crack their amazing code.

Scientists at Cornell Medical College in New York are due to begin to study the stem cells of almost a dozen Ashkenazi Jews, who were a heavily persecuted group which originated from Russia........He (Dr Todd Evans, the scientist leading the study,

'The reason they live so long is not because they live healthy lives.
'Interbreeding can have a negative impact, but, in this case, some families had the opposite effect.

'They don't get cardiovascular disease, cancer, neurodegeneration or diabetes or very low rates.

'And we believe that one aspect to their resistance to disease has a stem-cell base.'

Dr Evans and his colleagues will extract stem cells from the elderly Jews' blood before transforming them into the cells of some vital organs which will use the 'healthy gene' signature.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1390081/Scientists-study-stem-cells-New-York-Jews-East-European-roots-live-100.html

True Rose that on the whole most tend to think that way ..the village idiot etc
but humans have always know the advantage of inter-breeding which is why we have inter-bred animals for years. You of course always will get the likes of Hitler who wanted to breed the perfect race.

which rather has its own irony Uzzi, doesn't it? that for health and longevity a group that Hitler would have despised have seemingly 'cracked it'.

True ...mind the gene base for the jewish community is large enough not to be inbreeding Jews marry Jews but not their immediate family. cousins etc

There are Jewish subsets that also have serious genetic disorders as well, remember. Tay Sachs is the well-known one.

http://www.mazornet.com/genetics/



The main risk with intra-group "breeding" is that if both parents carry a gene for a genetic disorder that would otherwise be recessive, it is expressed because of it coming from both.


http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Health/genetics.html

All of the above-mentioned conditions are inherited in an autosomal recessive manner.This means that an affected person has a change in both genes of the pair of genes, one change inherited from each parent. Neither gene in the pair is working properly, which causes the symptoms of the disease.
A carrier is someone who has a change in only one gene of the pair of genes.Carriers are healthy individuals who are only at risk for passing the gene change on to their children.Most often these diseases occur in families with no prior history of the disease.




The page below gives other factors specific to Ashkenazi Jews.


http://judaism.about.com/od/health/a/geneticdisorder.htm

Jewish Genetic Disorders
Jewish Genetic Disorders are a group of conditions which are unusually common among Ashkenazi Jews -- Jews who have ancestors from Eastern and Central Europe. These same diseases can affect Sephardi Jews and non-Jews, but they afflict Ashkenazi Jews more often - as much as 20 to 100 times more frequently.



So ... there are risks at least as great as the benefits, maybe.