Native Americans aren't genetically more susceptible to alcoholism

http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/2/9428659/firewater-racist-myth-alcoholism-native-americans

by fisherjeff • 11 years ago

45 45 11 years ago

VT_Drew• 11 years ago

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.

sp332• 11 years ago

Of course that is a component, but no one was sure if it was the whole story. Now we know.

ams6110• 11 years ago

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.

prutschman2• 11 years ago

Who do you include in "we"?

coldtea3• 11 years ago

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").

jqm2• 11 years ago

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.

protomyth4• 11 years ago

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.

coldtea3• 11 years ago

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?

sandworm1013• 11 years ago

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.

jerf3• 11 years ago

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...

sandworm1013• 11 years ago

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.

xrange• 11 years ago

You might be interested in researching CYP2E1.

http://www.science20.com/news_articles/cyp2e1_gene_and_alcoh...

maxerickson• 11 years ago

Alcohol metabolism already existed when humans started fermenting things on purpose:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_dehydrogenase

I don't know how reputable it is, but this article discusses allelles that do seem to confer some protection against alcoholism:

http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh301/5-13.pdf

tsotha4• 11 years ago

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.

AlexWest• 11 years ago

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

Kalium• 11 years ago

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

nostromo• 11 years ago

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• 11 years ago

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).

ta837423892• 11 years ago

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.

cpncrunch2• 11 years ago

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

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.

tsotha4• 11 years ago

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.

x0x0• 11 years ago

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

Torgo2• 11 years ago

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.

canjobear• 11 years ago

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.

protomyth4• 11 years ago

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.

coldtea3• 11 years ago

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.

tsotha4• 11 years ago

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

mslate• 11 years ago

Why does it matter that she's a woman?

That's not such a great way to initiate a criticism of another person's intellectual pedigree.

Torgo2• 11 years ago

You are right that it was not relevant, and I modified my comment to "person" to avoid the insinuation.

clarkm• 11 years ago

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:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2015/sep/11/why-im-s...

notNow• 11 years ago

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

andyl• 11 years ago

A cultural marxist parable wrapped in junk science.

protomyth4• 11 years ago

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.

Asbostos• 11 years ago

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

Native Americans aren't genetically more susceptible to alcoholism

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