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The genetic diseases you mentioned are significant mutations leading into strong dysfunctionalities in how the brain is supposed to function. Leading it not to

The genetic diseases you mentioned are significant mutations leading into strong dysfunctionalities in how the brain is supposed to function. Leading it not to function correctly. This is far from evolutionary path leading one population of people into some sort of mental retardation, especially when evolutionary selection would be against it. In addition most of the mentioned diseases are recessive which is the only reason they have survived, as any offspring with the disease won't survive to pass the genes on. Autism is a different case because it's not necessarily genetic (although I'm not sure if there are also genetic cases). In fact autism cases have exploded in recent history, so environmental factors are likely a contributor. One such theory is the vaccines containing mercury which is a strong neuro-toxin decaying neuron connections which would result into the observed behavior. I'm not going into that discussion however. I'm being unspecific about intelligence because it's inherently a very ambiguous concept, which is one of the fallacies of the IQ testing and the arguments given by the racists like in this thread. I can see short comings and non-objectiveness in almost every IQ test I have seen. And that without even taking into account the fact that they're "adjusted" periodically to reflect the norm which obviously means they're not perfectly objective to begin with. I was referring to 18th century Germany and for example theories created by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blumenbach http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blumenbach

whacked_new 19y ago
There are lots of points to address in your post but I choose not to. Thanks for the Blumenbach post; it was very interesting (but nevertheless does not show Germany to be the origin of the concept of race). Anyhow, I saw this on reddit and found it related, and interesting in general: http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/mit-corrects-inherited-retardation-autism-mice-15065.html http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/mit-corrects-inherited-retard... "The MIT study found that FMRP and mGluR5 are at opposite ends of a kind of molecular seesaw." These kinds of "molecular seesaws" are everywhere in the body. When things are only slightly out of balance you _may_ get drastic effects. Emphasis on may, because at this point nobody knows exactly what and how much of it is required to achieve what effect. But there you have it -- once it is identified, it is manipulable. The more important point is, many symptoms are graded in severity, and as this study shows, autism could be found to be less disconnected from normal than you may think.

whacked_new 19y ago

There are lots of points to address in your post but I choose not to. Thanks for the Blumenbach post; it was very interesting (but nevertheless does not show Germany to be the origin of the concept of race). Anyhow, I saw this on reddit and found it related, and interesting in general: http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/mit-corrects-inherited-retardation-autism-mice-15065.html http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/mit-corrects-inherited-retard... "The MIT study found that FMRP and mGluR5 are at opposite ends of a kind of molecular seesaw." These kinds of "molecular seesaws" are everywhere in the body. When things are only slightly out of balance you _may_ get drastic effects. Emphasis on may, because at this point nobody knows exactly what and how much of it is required to achieve what effect. But there you have it -- once it is identified, it is manipulable. The more important point is, many symptoms are graded in severity, and as this study shows, autism could be found to be less disconnected from normal than you may think.