Dear John Baker
Last month you sent a 26,000 word e-mail to myself and the Radstats list
in which I consider you made a number of insulting and defamatory
remarks which questioned my professional competence. I decided to ignore
this e-mail as I was in Washington at the time at the invitation of the
Pan American Health Organisation, and also because I could not imagine
that you were serious about making an official complaint. You have now
sent a 43,000 word e-mail in which you repeat these damaging remarks and
include a copy of a letter of complaint.
You therefore give me no choice but to respond. The University of
Bristol treats all complaints seriously and this is a policy I fully
support. However, the University of Bristol will also defend the
reputations of their Professors and staff and I also reserve the right
to defend my professional reputation by taking further action if necessary.
You make two complaints in you letter the first is that I believe that
genetically humanity has only a single racial group and secondly that
Modern molecular genetics did not, as he asseverates, begin with the
work of Cann, Stoneking and Wilson in 1987.
With regard to your first complaint I stand buy the claim that
genetically humanity has only a single racial group . It is based upon
the best available science and is a belief which I share with the large
majority of biologists, physical anthropologists and human geneticists.
It is also the stated belief of the United Nations and the large
majority of the governments of the World. However, you have dismissed
ALL the evidence I and others have quoted from the biological and
anthropological sciences in our e-mails as politically correct . I
strongly suspect that your thought processes on this issue have become
calcified and you are not willing to accept any evidence that does not
conform with your xenophobic prejudices.
Nevertheless, since Eric Thomas the Vice Chancellor of the University of
Bristol had an eminent career in clinical medicine before he became a
Vice Chancellor, you may wish to remind him in your complaint of the
recent editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) on the
genetics of race (the NEJM is one of the most prestigious medical
journals in the world)
attributing differences in a biologic end point to race is not only
imprecise but also of no proven value in treating an individual patient.
Race is a social construct, not a scientific classification. In a 1999
position paper, the American Anthropological Association stated the
following:
It has become clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly
demarcated, biologically distinct groups. . . . Throughout history
whenever different groups have come into contact, they have interbred.
The continued sharing of genetic materials has maintained humankind as a
single species. . . . Any attempt to establish lines of division among
biological populations is both arbitrary and subjective&.
A racial designation in the context of medical management not only
defies everything we have learned from biology, genetics, and history
but also opens the door to inequities in medical care. Recently, the
possibility of marketing drugs with the aim of promoting their use in
particular races has emerged. But since "race" is biologically
meaningless, how will a physician know whether a given patient (who may
identify with two races) has the combination of alleles that will ensure
the efficacy of the drug?....
Nature Genetics now obliges authors to "explain why they make use of
particular ethnic groups or populations, and how classification was
achieved." The requirement to furnish a scientifically valid definition
of the population under study should be adopted by all biomedical
journals. It will be difficult to abandon long-held preconceptions, but
perhaps the first benefit of the Human Genome Project will be to lead us
to the understanding that in medicine, there is only one race the
human race. (Editorial NEJM, May 3, 2001, Volume 344:1392-1393)
Presumably, you now believe that the New England Journal of Medicine is
also politically correct?
Your second complaint is ludicrous. What I wrote was;
To briefly go through the argument again - modern molecular genetic
studies began with the work of Cann, Stoneking and Wilson in 1987 when
they demonstrated from mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis that all human
populations had an African origin approximately 100,000 to 150,000 years
ago (e.g. 5,000 to 7,500 ancestors ago).
It should be clear that I was referring to modern molecular genetic
studies into mitochondrial DNA in the analysis of human genetic
diversity and not to molecular genetic studies into other research
areas. I think this is fairly clear from the context of this e-mail and
the previous e-mail discussions it refers to!
Yours
Professor David Gordon
--
Dave Gordon
Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research
University of Bristol
8 Priory Road
Bristol BS8 1TZ, UK
E-Mail: [log in to unmask]
Tel: (44)-(117)-954 6761
Fax: (44)-(117)-954 6756
******************************************************
Please note that if you press the 'Reply' button your
message will go only to the sender of this message.
If you want to reply to the whole list, use your mailer's
'Reply-to-All' button to send your message automatically
to [log in to unmask]
*******************************************************
|
