Reprinted from the San Jose Mercury News, Tuesday, 7/23/91, without permission.
by Glenda Chui
Mercury News Science Writer
While the world frets about saving the rain forests, another rich source
of biological diversity is quietly vanishing: the human being.
Hundreds of distinct ethnic groups and tribes are disappearing, either
through intermarriage or through famine and disease. With them vanish their
genes, an irreplaceable storehouse of information about human physiology and
evolution.
Now a group of prominent Bay Area scientists is calling for an urgent
international effort to collect and preserve genetic material from at least 100
endangered peoples, like the Yanomami of the Amazon rain forests and the Kurds
of eastern Turkey.
They estimate that it would cost $10 million to $20 million over the next
five to 10 years - a fraction of the $3 billion cost of mapping the entire set
of genetic instructions for the human body, which so far has focused on
Caucasions.
And they say the effort should start immediately. In another 10 years, the
scientists warn, it may be too late for tribes like the Yanomami, who are dying
in large numbers from disease and environmental damage caused by gold mining in
the Amazon forests.
"It would be tragically ironic if, during the same decade that biological
tools for understanding our species were created, major opportunities for
applying them were squandered," the group wrote in a letter to be published
this fall in the journal Genomics.
The letter is signed by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, a population geneticist
at Stanford University; molecular anthropologist Allan Wilson and geneticist
Mary Claire King, both of University of California, Berkeley; Charles Cantor
of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory; and Robert Cook-Deegan of the Institute of
Medicine in Washingotn, D.C. (Wilson, 56, died Sunday of cancer.)
Studies of groups that have lived in isolation for thousands of years could
give scientists a clearer understanding of how humans evolved and spread over
the planet. It could also reveal new genetic diseases and explain why some
groups resist illness better than others.
The idea was hatched by Cavali-Sforza and population geneticist Kenneth
Kidd of Yale University. Over the past seven years, with virtually no funding,
they have collected samples from 15 human populations, including African
Pygmies, Melanesians, the Thoti of central India, Cambodians and Ethiopian Jews.
The geneticists remove white blood cells from each person and culture them
in the laboratory, then freeze them in liquid nitrogen. Since each cell
contains a complete set of the genetic material DNA, this preserves the genes
indefinitley for further study.
Meanwhile, Wilson's group at Berkeley has been collecting a different form
of genetic material known as mitochondrial DNA. Inherited only from the mother,
rather than from both parents, it changes quickly over time and is useful in
tracking evolutionary relationships. Wilson's studies of mitochondrial DNA led
him to the controversial theory that all humans descended from a single woman
who lived in Africa 200,000 years ago.
Despite their different approaches, Wilson and Cavalli-Sforza agreed on the
need for a study of human diversity.
One big problem will be logistics. The short lived blood samples - ideally,
at least 50 from each group - must reach the laboratory within 48 hours, so
the scientists propose setting up regional laboratories for procesing. Samples
would then be distributed world-wide.
The Human Genome Organization, or HUGO, has set up a committee of six to
study the plan. Cavalli-Sforza and King are members, as was Wilson.
Cavalli-Sforza said he alos hopes to recruit anthropologists to draw up a
priority list of threatened groups for study.
In their letter to Genomics, the proponents noted that many of these ethnic
groups have already been exploited by outsiders, and they may see the study as
another form of exploitation. So it will be essential, the scientists said, to
give them something in return, such as access to medical treatment.
Even so, some people who work with tribal groups vehemently oppose the idea.
"Isn't it kind of apppalling?" said Jason Clay, research directory for Cultural
Survival, a non-profit group in Cambridge, Mass., that works to protect
indigenous cultures.
He said the study raises a number of ethical questions: How could scientists
obtain informed consent from the people under study? And who would own the
resulting stockpile of genetic material?
Clay estimates that there are about 5,000 indigenous groups in the world,
totaling 600 million people. "I would estimate that within the next generation
maybe 20 or 30 years, 500 of (the groups) will be gone," he said; the $10
million proposed for studying them would go a long way toward saving them
instead.
"Imagine how much more we could tell about human evolution if we had some of
these groups actually walking around and evolving," Clay said.
However, Cavalli-Sforza said the study would put a spotlight on these groups
that would help the fight to save them. "First you need knowledge," he said
"once you have knowledge, then you can help."
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