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Genetic Research In The Heart of Amish Country
FrenchyinOntario writes "Insular, inbred communities like the Ashkenazi Jews and Indian tribes can be a bonanza of genetic information for researchers, and the Amish & Mennonite communities in the United States are proving to be fertile ground as well for scientists who want to better understand the nature of genetic diseases and how rare illnesses occur more frequently in such closed-off communities. The Amish, famous for their renunciation of a lot of technology, are embracing a lab that has been built in the centre of their community because their faith teaches them to "help their fellow man", recognizing that helping scientists better understand the genetic causes of diabetes, mental retardation, and some of the rarer diseases in their families, helps themselves as well as others. For a better understanding of the Amish and their approach to technology, Wired magazine ran an excellent story a few years back better illustrating why they are not just mindless kneejerk technophobes."
how are these whacko's "important" what do they contribute to society? bugger all i'd wager. thus making them extremely selfish people as a group. their only saving grace is they don't whinge or expect help with their pathetic small minded lives.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Inbreeding in this sense is not necessarily harmful. In fact, societies with high rates of close marriages (for example first cousins) can have lower gene frequencies for mutations causing recessive diseases than outbred populations because there is more opportunities for selection to act against the mutation.
You're kidding me right? Have you seen what freaks come out of those kinds of families?
First of all, they produce the ugliest of people. Second, if you have 3-4 kids in such a family, you can expect one to be a total freak.
Like I heard about some Indian family that had a kid whose aging process is accelerated so bad that he dies at age 10 of old age. It was being used to study the genetic basis of aging.
"People from such communities tend to care a great deal more about their fellow man, and on a day to day basis"
While everyone is falling all over themselves to praise the amish, I'd like to bring up a relevant statistic:
The Amish voted for Bush.
And in record numbers.
Their tranquil and idyllic life comes at a huge cost of ignorance of world issues. And their religious beliefs put them right in Bush's pocket, with intolerance of gays and abortion being at the top of their concern list.
Funny, you'd think a peace loving society like the Amish would be upset about a war monger president.
As is usually the case when outsiders look at pocket communities like this, the fantasy is better than the reality.