"Rossianin"

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Daniel Rancour-Laferriere wrote:

> Another issue: "blood."  Not only is there no such thing as a
> "rossiianin" "by blood," there is also no such thing as a "russkii"
> "by blood."  To assert that one is an ethnic Russian "by blood" is to
> assume that there is a Russian race.  There is no Russian race because
> there are no races in humans generally.  Racism is both morally and
> biologically unfounded.
>
> To put it another way.  "Blood" or "race" is a metaphor for genetic
> distinction.  But human genes have clinal rather than racial
> distribution (unlike some non-human organisms).  So, there is no such
> thing as a gene (or genes) for Russianness.

Not so fast...

I would be the first to decry racism and bigotry and the other abuses
to which race has been put throughout history, but science is now (re-)
discovering that there are medically significant differences associated
with the five races of man.

Here are a couple of articles from reputable publications:

<http://www.iht.com/articles/67698.htm>

<http://www.frontpagemag.com/../articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=2258>
(NY Times science article reprinted on a right-wing site)

The original article by Neil Risch et al. is available at
<http://genomebiology.com/2002/3/7/comment/2007> (you have to enroll
for a free trial period; click the blue button at right)

Google produced 275 hits from all over the political and scientific
map at
<http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=risch+race+genome>

Obviously, this is not to say that the other 99.999% of our genes are
not the same.

Whether there is a Russian subrace and who might belong to it are
questions none of us is prepared to answer at this point in history.
But in an age of ever-finer distinctions and ever-more sophisticated
analyses, it seems likely that mankind will soon be amenable to
infinite classification by whatever number of parameters we desire.
I hope we have the wisdom to put the information to good use.

--
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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