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It’s not surprising that historically plague-ridden Europeans would be less susceptible to a new blight then other ethnicities. Disease resistance has been sel
by new_realist 6y ago
It’s not surprising that historically plague-ridden Europeans would be less susceptible to a new blight then other ethnicities. Disease resistance has been selected for.
- peteretep 6y agoAsia got all the same plagues as Europe
- dredmorbius 6y agoThe two regions often responded very dissimilarly. nKyle Harper'sbThe Fate of Rome looks at this in depth. TL:DR; civilisation's patterns (cities, trade, travel) co-evolve diseases. Populations tend to evolve resistance to local endemic disease, but are susceptible to novel agents, including foreign infections. Rome infected China and vice versa.
- DoreenMichele 6y agoThat's not how evolution works. Cystic fibrosis is a predominantly Caucasian genetic disorder because one copy of the gene helps protect against certain historical plagues in Europe without being too debilitating. But two copies kill you gruesomely at a young age. And it kills you primarily by making you more prone to infection. Kind of like how Sickle Cell works. It helps protect against malaria, but two copies of the gene are bad news.
- bad_user 6y agoThese factors aren't causal. In western countries at least, an obvious confounded for those of asian or black ethnic descent is _poverty_ and thus access to healthcare, malnutrition, sleep deprivation, poor education and everything else that goes with poverty.