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From: hkhenson@cup.portal.com (H Keith Henson)
Newsgroups: sci.research,talk.politics.misc,sci.bio,soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Re: The Ubiquity of Tay-Sachs: a shocking but elegant theory
Message-ID: <15018@cup.portal.com>
Date: 24 Feb 89 08:36:23 GMT
References: <10276@ut-emx.uucp> <eoig7#1hZTGI=eric@snark.uu.net>
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In a privious posting Eric S. Raymond writes of the possibility that plague
might have a selective effect on the incidence of Tay-Sachs.  Maybe, but if
my memory of plague is correct, it has only intermittantly broken out 
among the rodent populations, with hundreds of years between episodes.
This is quite unlike the pressure that malaria puts on human gene selection.
An alternate way the gene could have become widespread is that a lot of 
people are desended from someone in which the mutation occured.  When
a people moves into a relatively unpopulated area, that happens.

Keith Henson
hkhenson@cup.portal.com