2&2 Slider To Leyritz
Well-known member
Gotcha, misinterpreted your point a bit. You are correct that certain ethnicities have increased incidence rates of various genetic disorders. However this is because a vast majority of genetic disorders are recessive meaning both alleles must have the altered gene in order to get disease. The isolated (and resulting inbred) nature of certain populations results in the increased risk. As you outbreed, you lower that risk because fewer and fewer individuals end up carrying the disease allele which results in fewer and fewer homozygous recessive individuals. This obviously doesn't apply to dominant genetic disorders but they are a minor fraction of total diseases. So on average, the more heterogeneous a population is the lower the rates of these types of diseases.
I will grant you it can be difficult to compare health outcomes between countries that have vastly different population/genetic dynamics. However if one was to seek to determine if heterogeneity positively or negatively impacted disease occurrence and health outcomes, there would be far more support (history/dogmas of genetics, research, case studies, etc) supporting the notion that increased heterogeneity positively impacts it. Much tougher sell the other way.
Yeah, I get what you are saying with respect to a particular disease. But if you take all diseases, across all ethnicities, and combine them all (or at least many) in one place, that would seemingly create a much higher amount of possible permutations of disorders for that country's healthcare system to deal with that impact other afflcitions (i.e. does someone with Sickle Cell have a different heart disease or cancer treatment/outcome than someone without?). Whereas if you are dealing with a homogeneous population with a relatively limited number of genetic disorders, then your treatment/outcome is going to be relatively consistent even though you may have higher concetrations of a handful of particular disorders, because there are less variables in play.