> 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.
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 ), 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).
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.
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.
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.
google heritable epigenetics and you'll find plenty of papers; there is new research in behavioral epigenetics showing inherited stress hormone changes in descendents of holocaust survivors
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.
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.
>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").
That stuff happened generations ago so I don't think it's the main reason there is such a drinking problem among Natives today.
Having spent some time around Native Americans here are some observations. Often when they drink they get carried away and drink to excess for the session. They often don't just sit and chat while doing it but engage in some fairly crazy behavior like turning over cars etc. Alcohol does appear to affect them differently and it's not "alcoholism" like someone's Anglo uncle who sits in front of the TV quietly downing a fifth of scotch every night until his liver gives out. In my limited observations, it's more like a group of 16 year old getting blind drunk down by the river in the effects it produces.
I don't think it's all environmental. I think the effects of alcohol are in general different than it is with other racial groups. Incidentally, the effects of sugar appear to also be worse as well. Go to any reservation and look at the incidents of diabetes and obesity. I don't have an explanation... maybe some of it is cultural, but I think there is a genetic/evolutionary component making the effects of alcohol and carbohydrates much more harmful to Native Americans. I think they need to keep looking.
> That stuff happened generations ago so I don't think it's the main reason there is such a drinking problem among Natives today.
NO, boarding schools, forced adoption, forced relocation to urban environments happened within the current generations. Anyone thinking this is old problems has not looked at new from Indian country.
"Having spent some time around Native Americans here are some observations"
I am typing this from a reservation and grew up here. I am a lineal descendant on the tribal roll (not of the tribe I lived with) but missed being an enrolled member by 1/8 blood quota. My Dad is enrolled.
Grouping all of the tribes is as foolish as grouping all of Europe. Dakota have very different behavior than Seminole or Navajo. What you saw is not indicative of all the tribes, but alcoholism is a problem with most. I have never observed the behavior you described. I have observed fights and violence.
Diabetes and Obesity are well know problems and have a lot to do with diet of people who were exiled to places where food would not grow and hunting became scarce. A lot of "Native American" food came from that era and is not exactly healthy.
Boarding schools and forced adoption weren't was OP mentioned though. What he mentioned was having friends and family killed and land stolen and being forced onto reservations. That stuff hasn't happened in a very long time so I have trouble believing it is the reason for drinking problems.
I agree on the foolishness of grouping all tribes. There are vast range of cultures of varying ages and certainly they have many dissimilarities.
I'm just relating my limited observations in context of two tribes in the SW. In my experience, alcohol does appear to affect the members differently. I don't think its all cultural but does have a biological basis. Just my opinion.
Well, the whole urban relocation resulted in a high suicide rate (90% in some studies), and land most certainly was stolen in the current generation. Look at the ongoing lawsuits against the Department of the Interior. So, no, it was done differently but it has happened again (ongoing) recently.
I too believe in the biological because its too many varied cultures to call it all cultural.
>That stuff happened generations ago so I don't think it's the main reason there is such a drinking problem among Natives today.
Yeah, they are just 1/20th of the numbers they used to be due to ethnic cleansing, having subjected to concentration camps for re-education just a century ago, equally looked down upon as blacks, living deprived from the original lands their culture and society was based on and moved to settlements far away from their homes...
Why wont those fools accept that what's past is past?
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.
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.
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.
The point is that there is demonstrated large-scale selection effects on the relevant time frames, and I fully expect more to emerge as we learn more and our powers of perception increase. It was not a dumb theory. It was merely wrong.
It's easy in hindsight to explain how obvious the correct answer is, but it doesn't count for much.
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?
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.
"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...)
> 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
>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.
Evolution happens over very short time frames if the stress is great enough. I don't know if that's the case in this instance, but it's certainly plausible.
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
The title is just the hypothesis. Their conclusion is the opposite: "The findings suggest that it is unlikely that Native Americans carry a genetic variant that predisposes them to alcoholism. Certain variants of ADH and ADLH do have a protective affect against alcoholism in some Native American people; however, these findings do not explain the high incidence of alcoholism in the tribes that were studied."
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.
>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."
I wish people would stop making blanket claims about epigenetics like that, but somehow I doubt it will ever happen -- the explanation is just too convenient.
I thought this was a pretty good response to the referenced study:
Fwiw, the claim that the genetic evidence is bunk comes from "Joseph Gone, associate professor of psychology at the University of Michigan", not a social worker.
I would prefer an actual geneticist and I cannot help but think of type of food intolerance that recently appeared on HN to show me this might be bunk.
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.
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.