Genes and Race: Human History?

By: James V. Kohl | Published on: May 26, 2014

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Roundup of Book Reviews of Nicholas Wade’s A Troublesome Inheritance

My comment: Many reviewers of Wade’s book on genes and race appear to think he has accurately represented issues of differences in cell types that evolutionary theorists associate with mutations, natural selection, and the evolution of human biodiversity. This may be cause for concern among those who are interested in accurate representations of biologically-based cause and effect.

In this century, it has become clear that ecological variation results in biodiversity, which is manifested in morphological and behavioral phenotypes that exemplify ecological adaptations in species from microbes to man. Therefore, most people might want to escape the criticisms associated with evolutionary theories based on population genetics that have received no support from experimental evidence of biologically based cause and effect. Yet, Wade sticks with mutations and natural selection as the cause of differences that somehow evolved. Reviewers claim no knowledge of biological facts that refute Wade’s outdated assertions. That’s scary, but no one says, BOO!

Indeed, he even discusses the modern human population that arose in what is now central China as if mutations and natural selection enabled the changes that occurred in hair, teeth, sweat glands, and mammary tissue — supposedly during the past ~30K years. The changes followed the climate change associated with disappearance of Neanderthals. That climate change and the associated dietary change can clearly be linked to reproductive success via a change in a single base pair linked to the substitution of a single amino acid in the organized genome of what may be the most successful human population on this planet.

If humans were frugivorous bats that ecologically adapted due to the availability of dietary ascorbic acid via the de novo creation of olfactory receptor genes, the human population would represent another population of mammals, albeit without wings, that successfully radiated to different regions of the planet via the conserved molecular mechanisms that enable adaptive radiation. If humans were mice, the amino acid substitution would be manifested in the same changes in cell types. Humans are not mice, but the same changes in cell types occur due to the same amino acid substitution. Amino acid substitutions also differentiate the cell types of other human populations.
The question arises, do serious scientists still think that mutations and natural selection enable adaptive radiation? Is there a model for that? If so, the model could be compared to what is known about the conserved molecular mechanisms of biolophysically constrained cause and effect. See for example: Interspecies communication between plant and mouse gut host cells through edible plant derived exosome-like nanoparticles. The article links genes to differences in morphology and behavior without resorting to claims made by neo-Darwinists.
Indeed, the focus is more on the fact that Darwin set forth when he repeatedly urged consideration of the ‘conditions of life’ that must be met before natural selection could occur. His conditions of life require selection for food, which is manifested in changes in the microRNA/messenger RNA balance and cell type differentiation in bats and humans — if not all species, or some that might have mutated into existence. The report on the article mentions the fact that “With the recent discovery that non-coding microRNA’s in food are capable of directly altering gene expression within human physiology,[1] this new study further concretizes the notion that the age old aphorism ‘you are what you eat’ is now consistent with cutting edge molecular biology.”
Nicholas Wade’s book includes nothing known about the molecular biology of cause and effect. Reviewers seem to know about nothing but evolutionary theory.