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Comment by 1234throwaway | Hacker News Reader

But, without the recently invented therapeutics you mentioned (vitamin d supplements, sunscreen), people will have negative health outcomes from living in an environment they are not suited to.

There is no need to get emotional here - just accept the scientific and natural fact that in the long term evolution means that people are highly A/B optimised for their environment - there is a reason why in nature there are different ethnicities in different climates

Your approach is well intentioned, but it will lead to unnecessary suffering

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1.) At this point, it is not "recently invented". It is long term known.

2.) Vitamin D deficiency is affecting you negatively, but not enough to claim that people are "living in an environment they are not suited to". That is absurdly exaggerated claim, especially given all the various reasons why people in history died.

3.) Racism is causing way more suffering then overall vitamin D deficiency.

You're being uncharitable, which is part of the problem. These supplements are "recently invented" in terms of evolutionary history and it's not clear how well they work, compared to actual sun exposure.

"Not suited to" may be a contentious choice of words, but "not adapted to" is plain fact. Not being adapted to an environment confers disadvantages. Perhaps these disadvantages are minor, certainly in this case they are not lethal (in isolation), but from a healthcare perspective, they are important to take into consideration.

Consider that jumping at every opportunity to scold someone choosing their words unwisely does nothing to actually fight racism, but could indirectly harm those people you are intending to help. After all, why would a true racist care about the health outcomes of the races they ostensibly despise? Why would anyone risk investigating genetic differences in medicine, when the payoff is an accusation of racism by well-meaning but uneducated laymen?

> Why would anyone risk investigating genetic differences in medicine, when the payoff is an accusation of racism by well-meaning but uneducated laymen?

You are replying in a thread that above has a link to a great deal of race-specific research done on just Covid-19. There is a large amount of race-specific medicinal research. There is a huge amount of scientific research into medical and sociological factors that pertain to race. You will find it in seconds if you Google for it. Many standard heart-health guides will factor in your ethnicity.

To suggest there isn’t, and there’s some kind of conspiracy is just a form of tired “race realism” bullshit. Just more suggesting that “if we let the facts speak” we’d find some races are superior to others.

People are maladapted to live almost everywhere, which is why we wear warm clothes and sun protection. This whole thing is a racist trope to give cover to the idea that people of colour don’t “belong” in places.

I didn't mean to say that there isn't any race-specific research, but that there is a risk of being called a racist (or a "race realist") associated with doing such research, especially when it gets attention from sensationalist media and keyboard warriors on social media.

Therefore, if there is such a risk, it must have a chilling effect on actual research and on public health relations, even if doesn't outright prevent it from happening at all.

You are demonstrating that there indeed is such a risk, by suggesting that I'm one step away from proclaiming the superiority of the white race. You're not doing anyone any favors with that.

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