Sickle-Cell Disease Among African Americans

802 Words2 Pages

Explain why the increased prevalence of sickle-cell disease among African Americans has more to do with the environmental factors than the skin color or other phenotypes used to define races.

During a short break of solitude from studying, I explored and came across that the environment in which most African Americans reside in has a high occurrence of malaria virus. The malaria virus disease is contagious and when it contaminates someone with sickle cell traits, it cannot survive on the external part of the human body so therefore the individual doesn’t develop the deadly malaria virus. While looking further into our class textbook on Human Genetics 11th Edition by Ricki Lewis, and this issue of sickle-cell among the African Americans, I …show more content…

The WebMD listed the Ashkenazi Jews’ diseases in this order: “Bloom syndrome, Canavan disease, Cystic fibrosis, Familial dysautonomia (FD), Fanconi anemia, Gaucher disease, Mucolipidosis IV, Niemann-Pick disease (type A), Tay-Sachs disease, and Torsion dystonia.” (WebMD, 2005)

Reference

Brooks, Jamie D., King, Meredith L., (2008). Geneticizing Disease. Implications for Racial Health Disparities. Center for American Progress. Progressive Ideas for a Strong, Just, and Free America. Retrieved from https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/downloads/2008_geneticizing_disease.pdf

Lewis, Ricki, (1997), Human Genetics, 2nd Edition, pp 247-248. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/educators/course/session7/explain_b_pop1

Lewis, Ricki, (2014), Human Genetics, 11th Edition, Chapter 12. Gene Mutation. [VitalSource Bookshelf Online]. Retrieved from https://digitalbookshelf.southuniversity.edu/#/books/VBID1259623602

Lewis, Ricki, (2014), Human Genetics, 11th Edition, Chapter 15 Changing Allele Frequencies, pp 293. [VitalSource Bookshelf Online]. Retrieved from

Show More
Related

  • Race Based Medicine a Form of Racism

    2279 Words  | 5 Pages

    Roberts DE. What's Wrong with Race-Based Medicine?: Genes, Drugs, and Health Disparities. Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology. 2011;12(1):1-21.

    Read More

  • Dealing with My Bipolar Sister

    1539 Words  | 4 Pages

    -Reilly Philip. Is It In Your Genes. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. 2004: 223-228. Print

    Read More

  • Dr. Sharon Moalem And Jonathan Prince's Survival Of The Sickest

    1076 Words  | 3 Pages

    Malaria survives on healthy red-blood cells and carriers do not have a lot of healthy red-blood cells. Similarly to how those with hemochromatosis starved the bubonic plague of iron, sickle cell anemia carriers starve malaria of red-blood cells. The proactive effect of malaria only works on those who have one copy of sickle cell anemia and not the actual illness. If one has sickle cell anemia, one is more likely to get malaria. Nonetheless, malaria is such a vicious disease that anything that can aid in the fight against it and towards survival and reproduction is helpful.

    Read More

  • Genetic Therapy and its Place in Today’s Society

    1159 Words  | 3 Pages

    In this paper, I will argue that genetic therapies should be allowed for diseases and disabilities that cause individuals pain, shorter life spans, and noticeable disadvantages in life. I believe this because everyone deserves to have the best starting place in life possible. That is, no one should be limited in their life due to diseases and disabilities that can be cured with genetic therapies. I will be basing my argument off the article “Gene Therapies and the Pursuit of a Better Human” by Sara Goering. One objection to genetic therapies is that removing disabilities and diseases might cause humans to lose sympathy towards others and their fragility (332).

    Read More

  • Sickle Cell Disease Case Study

    878 Words  | 2 Pages

    1. Sickle Cell Disease is life-threatening and has a risk of of causing depression. In this study I examine the experiences that Sickle Cell patients go through specifically at emergency healthcare facilities to find out if there are any negative stigmatizations surrounding this disease. There may be judgments that are made about these patients from healthcare professionals when they seek drugs for their pain relief that may cause the stigmatization to occur. I will also investigate why individuals that have Sickle Cell Disease experience longer waiting times at emergency healthcare facilities and the lack of control they may have over their care regime.

    Read More

  • The Dangers of Race Based Medicine

    4244 Words  | 9 Pages

    On November 11th, 2004, NitroMed, a Massachusetts based pharmaceutical company published a study on the effects of a new drug called BiDil in treating heart failure among African Americans in the New England Journal of Medicine (Taylor 2049). Since announcing the study, NitroMed’s research has sparked controversy surrounding the ethical implications and scientific evidence of race-based medicine. This study marks a breakthrough in race-based drug treatments as the first pharmaceutical ever researched, endorsed and targeted for a single ethnic group (Pollack 1). The racially-specific pharmaceutical initiative is a product of tremendous government funding allotted by the Clinton administration to the Human Genome Project at the turn of the millennium. Since then, much medical research has focused on understanding the human genome in search of genetic explanations for health problems while funding and interest have decreased in social-related health research and medical programs for poor and underserved populations (Braun 162).

    Read More

  • Sickle Cell Case Study

    1537 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the continent Africa, about 1 in 100 individuals develops this disease. We ask ourselves why is the frequency of a potentially fatal disease so much higher in Africa? The answer is related to another deadly disease, which is called malaria. Chills, fever, vomiting, and severe headaches characterize malaria (GENETICS Sickle Cell Case Study. (n.d.). 2000, October 19). Malaria is caused by a disgusting parasite called Plasmodium that is transmitted to humans by mosquitos. When the malaria parasites invade the bloodstream, the red blood cells that contain defective hemoglobin get sickle cell out and die (Facts About Sickle Cell Disease. 2014, January 16). This helps protect the individual with Sickle Cell Anemia from an infection of malaria. As you can see, this is why a variety of areas in the world has a high rate of malaria, such as

    Read More

  • Sickle Cell Anemia

    1107 Words  | 3 Pages

    Sickle cell anemia is a hereditary disorder that mostly affects people of African ancestry, but also occurs in other ethnic groups, including people who are of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern descent. More than 70,000 Americans have sickle cell anemia. And about 2 million Americans - and one in 12 African Americans - have sickle cell trait (this means they carry one gene for the disease, but do not have the disease itself).

    Read More

  • The Birthmark Symbolism Essay

    1809 Words  | 4 Pages

    Boston: Bedford/St. Martin,. 304 - 316 mm. Print. The. Newman, Stuart A.. “The Hazards of Human Developmental Gene Modification.”

    Read More

  • Funding of sickle cell diseases because of Race.

    789 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ular dystrophy, but less than $100,000 for SCA. National Institutes of Health grants for many less common hereditary illnesses exceed those for SCA.” (Gary A. Gibson, “Sickle cell disease: Still here and still causing Pain’) “If these conditions affected the white mainstream population rather than ethnic minority communities, maybe they wouldn’t be so badly overlooked.” (Sarah calkin, “Race ‘a factor” in variability of sickle cell services”) In these cases Race remind a big part when it’s affecting African American it’s a slow process on health care and researchers. If sickle cell was affecting more whites or wasn’t inherited the most by African American would it be a big deal as Cancer or HIV. Questions remind why cant sickle cell disease get much attention or funding for high organizations and researchers where is the social justice American suppose to have done.

    Read More

  • Diet Habits Essay

    1053 Words  | 3 Pages

    Collect as much information as you can on the history of chronic diseases on both sides of your family going back as least as far as your grandparents and preferably your great grandparents. Discuss how the presence or absence of certain chronic diseases in you family history influences your risk for these

    Read More

  • The Ethical Issues of Genetic Testing

    1419 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Human Genome Project is the largest scientific endeavor undertaken since the Manhattan Project, and, as with the Manhattan Project, the completion of the Human Genome Project has brought to surface many moral and ethical issues concerning the use of the knowledge gained from the project. Although genetic tests for certain diseases have been available for 15 years (Ridley, 1999), the completion of the Human Genome Project will certainly lead to an exponential increase in the number of genetic tests available. Therefore, before genetic testing becomes a routine part of a visit to a doctor's office, the two main questions at the heart of the controversy surrounding genetic testing must be addressed: When should genetic testing be used? And who should have access to the results of genetic tests? As I intend to show, genetic tests should only be used for treatable diseases, and individuals should have the freedom to decide who has access to their test results.

    Read More

  • Pros and Cons of Genetic Testing

    1221 Words  | 3 Pages

    In today’s world, people are learning a great deal in the rapidly growing and developing fields of science and technology. Almost each day, an individual can see or hear about new discoveries and advances in these fields of study. One science that is rapidly progressing is genetic testing; a valuable science that promotes prevention efforts for genetically susceptible people and provides new strategies for disease management. Unnaturally, and morally wrong, genetic testing is a controversial science that manipulates human ethics. Although genetic testing has enormous advantages, the uncertainties of genetic testing will depreciate our quality of life, and thereby result in psychological burden, discrimination, and abortion.

    Read More

  • Sickle Cell Disease Research Paper

    1327 Words  | 3 Pages

    Sickle cell disease (SCD) is one of the most common human genetic disorders. SCD is a pleiotropic genetic disorder, meaning that one mutation affects a wide variety of physical characteristics (15). currently affects 90,000 Americans and over 275,000 newborn infants annually worldwide (8). The average life expectancy has been calculated to be about 53 and 58 years for men and women respectively (10). The term Sickle cell disease actually refers to all of the various mutagenic genotypes that cause the various clinical manifestations otherwise known as a syndrome (1). In this condition, hemoglobin proteins of erythrocytic blood cells are misshapen, so the oxygen carrying capability is affected (2). SCD was first described by the physician James

    Read More

  • Importance Of Quantitative Genetics

    1549 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...ary part in genotypes of potential interest that human geneticists breeders, as well as evolutionary geneticists are investigating. However, although we have the capability to unravel experiments that the founders of quantitative genetics would have never imagined, but their basic, un-computational machinery that they developed is most easily adaptable to the latest analyses that will be needed. We are far from ‘letting-go’ molecular biologists from the mathematical techniques/systems, because this age in respect to genomics has been forced into accepting gratitude due to the major importance of quantitative methods as opposed to the new molecular genetics. As geneticists tend to map molecular variation as well as genomic data, quantitative genetics will be moving to the front position because of its relevance in this age of rapid advancement in molecular genetics.

    Read More

More about Sickle-Cell Disease Among African Americans

Open Document