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From: krista@ihlpa.ATT.COM (Anderson)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,sci.med
Subject: Re: Blood Questions
Message-ID: <10353@ihlpa.ATT.COM>
Date: 9 Nov 88 22:31:38 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 22

<>
    Thanks for the replies on blood questions.  My sibling was
probably wrongly tested as Rh positive at one time.

    As for blood type A helping one to be immune to smallpox,
after reading various comments, I've decided not to believe it,
unless some source superior to the encyclopedia publishes it.

    The fact that the Blackfeet have 59% type A, whereas the other
tribes north of Mexico have 1-35% type A, can be explained in other
ways.  There was indeed a smallpox epidemic in 1837 among the
Blackfeet and Blood of Montana/Canada.  There were French traders in
the area earlier than that.  So, perhaps the French intermarried and
passed on smallpox immunity as well as higher incidence of type A
blood before the epidemic.  So, it could be coincidental.

    On the other hand, for all we know the tribe may have had a high
incidence of type A before the epidemic and before the French!  :-) 
So I guess it's just one of those mysteries that makes Native
American studies so fascinating.

Krista A.