As a group, blacks have higher mortality due to lung cancer and heart disease than whites. Compared with whites, Hispanics have lower or similar mortality due to lung cancer and heart disease. Blacks and Hispanics tend to have lower IQs than whites. In general, people with low IQ tend to have higher mortality due to lung cancer and heart disease. Perhaps a gene that modulates IQ also has effects on mortality due to lung cancer and heart disease. These concepts are discussed in greater detail in a paper (Cognitive epidemiology of ethnic health and the CHRM2 vagal vigour hypothesis) that is available on the Nature Precedings website.

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do you listen to yourself? a gene that links IQ with mortality? How come ALL the great scientists from pierre curie, michael farraday, nikola tesla etc died young?

The reason I oppose Saletan's posts is because they feed the desire of certain aberrant elements in society to promulgate racial discrimination and primal violence based on race. this is where Nuremburg began. This is where auschwitz was birthed. In discussions such as this- ALL WITHOUT ONE SHRED OF SOUND SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE.

Nena637, you really need to take off your tin-foil hat and stop hyperventilating.

The comment linking IQ with mortality is not very well written, but your response is silly.

I completely missed the line in Saletan's piece that promulgated racial discrimination and primal violence. Could you point it out?

Properly run scientific research into the connections between race and physical disease had nothing whatsoever to do with Nuremburg or Auschwitz.

In fact, you prove Saletan's point: any research that doesn't support your particular point of view will provoke hysterical ranting from a certain anti-science anti-rationality segment, and will be ignored by the press.

Nena -

What proportion of the population that would be regarded as "white" would you recommend be tested for the sickle-cell gene?

If a gene that increases risk of diabetes happens to be on a chromosome right next to the gene for typical "black" person's hi-melanin skin, would you suggest we ignore the finding?