Re: This used to be on disease and immunity
Philip Deitiker (pdeitik@bcm.tmc.edu)
Tue, 23 Jul 1996 22:00:56 GMT
brunner@mandrake.think.com (Eric Brunner) wrote:
>: Do you claim that the extremely
>: high frequency observed among the haida is the result of natural
>: selection? Would that be pre- or post-contact selection? Or is it a
>: founder-effect? In any case, the genetics of the amerindian immune
>: system looks very different from old world populations. And yet, you
>: deny that this is indicative of differential genetic resistance - why?
>Absence of cause and effect.
Hey, everyone according to Eric Brunner, the HLA antigens are all
neutral mutations because they fail to show direct cause and effect
relationship in infection and resistance. Of course it could also mean
that Eric doesn't know immunology from a rat's ass or genetics from
the rat's other excretory orafice.
Say, if a person born without a functional adenosine deaminase
gene its only by pure chance that person got an extremely virulent
case of an innocous rhinovirus and died, not becasue all that persons
lymphocytes died and you had know way of protecting themself from even
the most common diseases, but by mere freak chance that a person
lacking ADA always get infected with the most virulent strains.
Seriously the presence or absence of adenosine deaminase didn't cause
the intial infection, so why is SCIDS attributed to its absence?
Philip
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