
Native Americans aren't genetically more susceptible to alcoholism - fisherjeff
http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/2/9428659/firewater-racist-myth-alcoholism-native-americans
======
nostromo
> Rates of all types of addiction — not just alcohol — are elevated in
> aboriginal peoples around the world, not only in America. It’s unlikely that
> these scattered groups randomly happen to share more vulnerability genes for
> addiction than any other similarly dispersed people.

This isn't sound science. Just look at a map of lactose tolerance and you will
find that people not exposed to milk-producing livestock until recently are
much more likely to be lactose intolerant.

Convincing research would look for genetic markers directly -- or perhaps look
at alcoholism amongst children adopted across cultures.

~~~
gavazzy
There is likely a combination of social and genetic factors; while the social
factors mentioned in the article affect the rates of alcoholism, there is a
significant genetic component, which the article claims has no evidence, but
ignores the evidence that exists!

Alcohol metabolism in humans varies among populations, with some having a
greater capability to metabolize it. The article fails to even mention the
purported genetic causes (lack of ADH or ALDH), which would seem to be
important if you are going to claim that the existing evidence is wrong.

That genetics affects rates of alcoholism is not a controversial opinion: the
NIH has a report on the variance caused by genetics (
[http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh301/3-4.htm](http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh301/3-4.htm)
), noting that "Native Americans and Alaskan Natives are five times more
likely than other ethnicities in the United States to die of alcohol-related
causes. Native Americans are predisposed to alcoholism because of differences
in the way they metabolize alcohol."

This makes sense when you consider the environment of the social sciences
today, which favors nurture over nature. Anything that is influenced by social
interaction (e.g. stress causing alcoholism) must be caused by it, even if
there actually are genetic influences. Unfortunately, there is a cost to the
emphasis on social interaction. Suppose that some people have a genetic
predisposition to alcoholism, but they believe that it is caused only by
social factors. Then they will be more inclined to put themselves at risk by
drinking with friends.

(A similar argument for genetic testing can be made for the APOE gene, which
modulates risk of Alzheimer's from drinking. For instance, people with APOE
2/2 are LESS likely to get Alzheimer's if they drink, while those with APOE
4/4 are MORE likely to get Alzheimer's. Claiming that Alzheimer's is caused
merely by social interaction while ignoring this genetic effect leads to
everyone being worse off).

------
ta83742389
I'd be interested in hearing from, say, a biologist or a medical doctor, too.
But the article only interviews academics from social work and psychology.

I'd like to see some links to research on genetics. The article links only
research on environmental factors in addiction.

The article's conclusion may well be right, but it's not convincing if you
don't agree with the conclusion before reading it.

~~~
cpncrunch
You can't really trust these press releases in general. A quick search turns
up this:

[http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh301/3-4.htm](http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh301/3-4.htm)

The gist seems to be that although some groups do have different alcohol
metabolizing genes, Native Americans don't differ from the general population,
so their alcohol problems can't be explained by genetics.

If you really want to get to the bottom of it, you'd need to spend an hour or
two on google scholar.

~~~
tsotha
I don't find the genetic argument convincing. There are genes we know of that
seem to be related to alcoholism and/or addiction, and native Americans don't
seem to have them any more than anyone else. But that doesn't mean there
aren't genes related to alcoholism we _don 't_ know about.

~~~
cpncrunch
I think they're just debunking the notion that we have already found the
"alcoholism gene" in Native Americans.

------
VT_Drew
No shit. We took their land, killed their families and friends, and
quarantined them to "reserves". Then introduced them to alcohol. What did you
think would happen? It isn't genetics, it is escape-ism.

~~~
ams6110
This is the story of all humanity up until the last couple of centuries.
Tribes, countries, empires killing and conquering. It's not a uniquely
American phenomenon. It's still happening in many places today.

I think we need to stop leaning on past atrocities (without endorsing or
excusing them in any way) as an excuse for not being responsible adults in the
here and now. We can't change the past, we can only live the best life we can
going forwards.

~~~
coldtea
> _This is the story of all humanity up until the last couple of centuries.
> Tribes, countries, empires killing and conquering. It 's not a uniquely
> American phenomenon. It's still happening in many places today._

Americans (European settlers that is, but later Americans too) did it in an
unprecedented scale -- similarly to European colonialists elsewhere at the
same time.

And unlike those older tribes which saw power for what it is, they presumed to
have the moral high ground (and/or a "manifest destiny").

~~~
ta83742389
Unprecedented seems a little strong:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasions_and_conquests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasions_and_conquests)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogenic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogenic_disasters_by_death_toll)

------
sandworm101
Given that strong alcoholic drinks have been around for at most a few thousand
years it seems silly to assume that any group has yet evolved any genetic
adaptations.

Cultural adaptations are certainly a different question. I know of many native
communities in my area (Canada) that have very specific substance abuse
issues. They are tied to unique economic, sociological and even geographical*
situations, but nobody takes genetic predisposition seriously.

*A typical geographic situation would be the prevalence of oxycodone over alcohol in northern communities. Pills are smaller/easier to transport by air than liquids.

~~~
jerf
Lactose tolerance is believed to have developed in the last 5,000 - 10,000
years. There was recently a news story about the Inuit having an adaptation
that is at most 20,000 years old [1], and probably unique to them. The deeper
we dig into genes the more stuff like this we'll find.

It wasn't a silly theory. It may be _wrong_ , but it wasn't silly.

[1]: [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/science/inuit-study-
adds-t...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/22/science/inuit-study-adds-twist-
to-omega-3-fatty-acids-health-story.html?_r=0)

~~~
sandworm101
Except that neither of those examples involve new substances. Lactose has been
around for literally millions of years. Genes for dealing with it, or not, are
part of what makes us mammals (ie things with mammary glans that nurse their
young). And the gene found in the Inuit has not appeared recently. It exists
nearly worldwide and is far older than its recent rise to prominence in the
inuit. It has not evolved anew.

Alcohol is new. While old genes may have evolved to deal with addiction
generally, any gene specifically addressing alcohol could not possibly have
evolved in the brief time the new world native communities were genetically
disconnected from europe/asia/africa.

I also seriously doubt that alcohol was predominant enough in any ancient
population for it to have an impact on survivability. Only the rich could
afford to drink that much.

~~~
douche
Why believe that it takes thousands of years to select and enhance a gene? We
have selectively bred animals in decades to exhibit traits that were useful,
and long before we had any concept of genetics.

We have evidence of the production of beer dating back before the Pyramids -
and beer and wine were staples of pre-modern diets in the old world, that
everyone drank, at least in the form of watered wine and small-beer, as the
drinking water all-too-often would kill you. Why should we not expect to see
genetic adaptation in such an environment?

~~~
sandworm101
You are skipping through a few steps. The gene has to first appear. It has to
be one of those many tiny little perturbations that appear every so often. It
then has to give that organism some sort of advantage. For a gene controlling
alcoholism, it would have to appear somewhere where alcoholism had some
substantial impact on survivability ... and then spread out across europe,
asia and africa giving some similar advantage to persons along the way else it
die out.

I might be open if the old world suffered from widespread alcoholism (to the
point of impacting survivability across classes) for the last 20,000 years,
but is just didn't. Producing alcohol takes proper effort and resources. You
only get there one you aren't starving anymore. Egypt and a few other areas
capable of sustaining intensive agriculture were not the norm.

~~~
jerf
"For a gene controlling alcoholism, it would have to appear somewhere where
alcoholism had some substantial impact on survivability"

No, it doesn't. It needs to be a gene that has an impact on alcoholism, but
the thing being selected for could be something else entirely. Consider
sickle-cell anemia. If you just look at it as the "sickle-cell anemia gene"
you'll boggle at how it spread as far as it did, but that's because it's also
the "malaria-resistance gene". If alcohol is introduced into a population that
did not have widespread, ready access to it for long time frames, there's no
guessing in advance what could happen as it interacts with arbitrary other
adaptations that have never "seen" alcohol before.

I want to point out you keep boggling at how intrinsically impossible this all
is, and I keep _citing concrete examples_ of very similar things that happen.
And I'll reiterate that my point is that it was a viable theory, until the
facts contradicted it, not that it was certainly correct and certainly not
that it's correct _now_. Simply that it was not a stupid theory. (Indeed,
given that this is just one study I'd be glib even saying it's "disproved",
it's merely one that we must Bayesian-update to a much smaller probability.
But I wouldn't downgrade it to zero quite yet. We've got a lot of gene science
left to learn. And as always happens, when we take a closer look, it always
turns out to be more complicated than we thought...)

------
Asbostos
I've heard this "generations of abuse" argument before to explain the low
socioeconimic status of blacks in America and natives in other countries. But
is there any evidence for it other than "blame the more successful class"?

I know behaviors are passed between generations - keeping poor people's
children poor, violent people's children violent, etc. But does it really work
over hundreds of years? Without evidence it's nothing more than an excuse.

There's also the political correctness phenomenon of being allowed to blame
metabolism for racial differences but not another genetic factor - inherited
intellectual differences. It even makes some sense that there should be
differences - a small group of people who evolved over 1000 years through
tribal fighting might end up mentally or intellectually different from others
who lived in larger social groups with relatively non-violent lives. It's
quite possible that in some societies, intellectuals are systematically
filtered out of the gene pool while in others, violent people are. See for
instance the Ashkenazi Jews
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jewish_intelligence)

------
AlexWest
Of course it's not genetic, it's environmental.

~~~
Kalium
It's not a binary question, nature or nurture, here. It can be both.

------
Torgo
A person with a masters degree in social work assures us that the genetic
evidence collected to date is bunk.

>severe stress doesn’t just affect one generation: it is passed down, both
socially — affecting parenting — and physiologically, by actually changing how
children’s genes are read, which can alter both brain and body, a phenomenon
known as epigenetics. Research on children of Holocaust survivors, for
example, shows changes in reading instructions for genes related to stress.

Citing debunked garbage study, appealing to science like magic when it
confirms biases. Article immediately discarded.

~~~
coldtea
> _A woman with a masters degree in social work assures us that the genetic
> evidence collected to date is bunk._

Perhaps you missed the whole:

"In fact, there’s no evidence that Native Americans are more biologically
susceptible to substance use disorders than any other group, says Joseph Gone,
associate professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. American
Indians don’t metabolize or react to alcohol differently than whites do, and
they don’t have higher prevalence of any known risk genes."

thing.

> _Article immediately discarded._

Bias immediately detected.

~~~
tsotha
"Associate professor of psychology"? Exactly what qualifies him to make that
kind of statement?

------
notNow
Isn't the word "disposed" more suitable to this context than "susceptible"?

------
andyl
A cultural marxist parable wrapped in junk science.

~~~
protomyth
Yeah, this is a typical important sounding Verge article that ignores all the
research and nuance in the study of Native Americans including some fine
research by Native Americans living on the reservation.

