James Neel, Napoleon Chagnon, And Patrick Tierney

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who are the controversy’s main characters? The three individuals who have played the most important roles in the controversy and whose names are repeatedly referred to in discussions of it are James Neel, Napoleon Chagnon, and Patrick Tierney. The late James Neel has been called by many the father of modern human genetics. He served on the University of Michigan’s faculty for more than forty years, becoming one of its most distinguished members. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences as well as to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was awarded the National Medal of Science and the Smithsonian Institution Medal. Neel is perceived as the first scientist to recognize the genetic basis for sickle cell anemia. He conducted research on the aftereffects of atomic radiation with survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings of World War II in Japan. He also suggested not only …show more content…

Neel became interested in Amazonian Indians because of his research relating population genetics to principles of natural selection—whether certain genetic structures contained particular evolutionary adaptive advantages. Realizing that detailed studies of “civilized populations” would prove less instructive for examining early human genetic adaptations than “tribal populations,” having the Amazon region fairly accessible, and knowing that Amerindians had entered the Americas fairly recently (he believed between fifteen and forty thousand years ago), Neel sought out relatively undisrupted groups in the Amazon for study. He wrote in his autobiography: “I realized we would probably never assemble from studies of existing tribal populations the numbers of observations necessary to relate specific genes to specific selective advantages, but at least we could take steps to define the range of population structures within which the evolutionary forces shaping humans had to operate”

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