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Comment by imglorp | Hacker News Reader

For some context from someone who's been on that Res, its population is highly vulnerable with no margin for mishaps. It's a place of generational, crushing poverty, crime, illness, genetic-exacerbated substance abuse, broad lack of economic opportunity, cultural isolation, and federal disinvestment.

Free federal healthcare is available, but only at an IHS hospital in Rapid City 1.5 hours away in good weather: it's antiquated and maximally bureaucratic and probably lower standards of care than your vet provides.

The local Habitat for Humanity chapter (I served on their board) tried to help them with community housing efforts, but houses were always gutted of all fixtures before completion.

IMO, at a minimum, the IHS (and the VA) need to merge under Medicare for standardization, availability, and economics of scale and industry needs incentives to bring employment opportunities (I think Cisco tried once and bailed).

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> genetic-exacerbated substance abuse

Could you expand on this a bit? Not a concept I am familiar with

Not parent, but this is a generally accepted thing, e.g.

https://www.bumc.bu.edu/genetics/research/substance-abuse/

That paper also seems to heavily qualify the findings, implying that environmental factors may dominate genetic ones (or may not, the point is that we don't know):

However, these loci explain only a small proportion of the genetic variance. The “missing heritability” may be explained by other genetic mechanisms and gene*environment interactions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_and_Native_Americans#G...

Alcoholism rates among Native Americans is higher than most groups, which leads some to suspect a genetic reason. Currently, there isn't a ton of evidence supporting that idea.

There is also severe distrust of western medicine and science in many Native American communities which makes doing studies hard.

I knew about the alcoholism rates, but had always assumed it was a socio-economic / situational driven thing.

I understand that historically it was used in some sense to control and indeed damage the Native Americans by the colonists? To what extent alcohol was completely new etc I do not know

It is very hard to tease genetic factors out from socio-economic ones, but IMHO it seems plausible that a population that has been exposed to alcohol for a long time (hundreds of generations) may have been better selected for higher tolerance than a population that has been exposed only recently (a few dozen generations, and with modern technology making selection pressure lower in general).

The evo-bio story of alcohol is confusing though, since fermentation has been present in East Asia as long as anywhere, and there's a large part of the population there that has the alcohol flush reaction.

You could tell the story as like, alcohol puts pressure on a population to evolve better responses, and with enough time the flush evolves and that helps limit drinking. But that's pretty just-so.

Yeah, I'm not saying that this is actually true, only that it's not absurd on its face. As I understand it (and I am absolutely not an expert here) North American indigenous populations separated from Asians at the end of the ice age, i.e. ~10,000 years ago, and since then had no exposure to alcohol. That seems like plenty of time for genetic predisposition to alcohol tolerance to be reduced. So it's possible and worthy of serious consideration and investigation. Whether it's actually true is a completely different question, one where the jury is still pretty clearly out.

This is simply not true. Indigenous peoples of mesoamerica have drunk fermented maize beverages for as long as maize has been cultivated. Tejuino is still a quite popular drink in Mexico.

Arguably what has changed is the ABV of such beverages. Post-industrial alcohol percentages are way higher than what precolonial mesoamericans, ancient Greeks, and vikings we're drinking

> Indigenous peoples of mesoamerica

OK, but Pine Ridge is in North America. There could have been enough isolation in pre-Columbian times for north American indigenous to evolve a different alcohol response from mesoamericans.

Like I said: I am not an expert, and I have no idea whether this hypothesis is true or not. I'm just not aware of any facts that would rule it out.

> You could tell the story as like, alcohol puts pressure on a population to evolve better responses, and with enough time the flush evolves and that helps limit drinking. But that's pretty just-so.

The "alcohol flush" reaction seems to be genetically conserved in Asia because it gives resistance to rice pathogens not because it protects against "alcoholism".

I think one thing to clarify here is that western Europeans have thousands of years of history brewing and drinking alcoholic beverages, but it was only in the past 250 years that heavily DISTILLED alcoholic beverages like whiskey at affordable prices became a thing. Have greater than 5 percent ABV in a beverage would've been a bit rarer preindustrial revolution I believe. Even heavily DISTILLED high proof colonial rum was quite expensive and typically mixed into punch water to bring down it's concentration. Mass production and lowering costs were what triggered the alcoholism epidemic and temperance movements of the late 19th and early 20th century.

Drinking in northern Europe does have a way longer and more entrenched history than elsewhere though. Colonial men women and children all drank watered down rum and beer which were more hygienic than water. In China, by contrast, half of the population gets Asian flush and cannot tolerate alcohol, and there is a strong traditional culture of boiling water and drinking tea!

As a long-time tea drinker it was a shock to realize that while tea is pretty good for you, historically its biggest health contribution has been in drinking boiled (or almost boiled) water, not those catechins or l-theanine...

Oh funny. I hadn’t thought of that.

Good point, distilled beverages (gin) affordable for the poor, hit Britain like a brick in the face in the 1700s. Whiskey in the U.S.

18th century was only 7 generations ago, not "a few dozen".

My nan was born in the 1930s and I have kids. So we're already at 3 generations that have had a chance to breed. My great grandparents takes us not even back to the start of the 20th century.

Having kids at 30 is historically very late. Late teens and early 20s was much more common. So perhaps not a few dozen, but certainly over a dozen.

>To what extent alcohol was completely new etc I do not know

Kind of a tricky question that is somewhat covered in my link. Alcohol was definitely brewed in the Americas pre-Columbus, but by the seventeenth century alcohol was largely unknown to the Natives interacting with the colonists.

I always wonder how much was lost in the population crash caused by the introduction of old world diseases.

Tejuino is a precolonial alcoholic beverage that is still enjoyed today. It's ABV is incredibly low compared to anything you'd buy in a modern 7/11 however.

The tarahumara people's have more alcoholic version called tesguino that is only drunk once per year as the preparation process is labor intensive, and the drink goes bad rather quickly

I think your points add much needed nuance, but isn't there a possibility that both are true? I.e., both your examples may be true for Native Americans in present-day Mexico while the OP's point could be true for other groups like the Lakota at Pine Ridge. (I'm not claiming any knowledge on the subject, just questioning whether both points have to be mutually exclusive)

It’s false to say there isn’t data and pier reviewed studies on the subject. The link is clear.

However, there’s a lot of propaganda that will pretend otherwise.

https://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh301/3-4.htm

I'm confused. Why link what you seem to consider "propaganda" showing no genetic predisposition to alcoholism rather than link the clear proof you claim exists?

Summary - and interpretation - from memory of a lot of reading:

Background: Humans are highly unusual amongst mammals; our livers are more than ten thousand times IIRC better at burning off alcohol than any other known mammal, and this is a rather recent change evolutionarily. This may have been necessary to survive off old winter fruit during the ice age that just about took us out (reduced our population down to low genetic variation.)

Alcohol, in common with all other organic solvents save water, changes every single chemical reaction within our cells at least a little bit - esp the speed and frequency of given reactions. (Hence the cancer risk, etc, etc.) The change to neurotransitter reactions is just one of those changes, but one we find pleasing and distracting. Some genes protective re alcohol consumption reduce the effects/pleasure alcohol brings. Others may reduce habituation (so dose doesn't tend to increase.) Etc. My genes adapt me so quickly to alcohol that habituation/dosage escalates FAST. I and my relatives famously just shouldn't start since alcoholism is a quick result if we keep drinking.

Cultures which have cultivated alcohol for thousands of years (Asia) are less vulnerable to alcoholism; no doubt those kinda genes were culled sometime back. Europeans less so, less protected. Central American native populations cultivated alcohol but (at least in some cultures) restricted its use to the elderly. North American natives, not to my knowlege.

Selecting strongly for alcohol resistance has costs, off course, there are always tradeoffs. And where evolutionary selection has acted very strongly over a short period of time, the tradeoffs (downsides) can be extreme (particularly from copy-number variations, which are common under heavy/fast selection.)

If you're going to be a teetotaller anyway, you'd prefer to have Native genes on average (other confounding variables aside.) But if you're going to drink - and alcohol is obviously dangerous - well, maybe you don't want the otherwise more ideal Native/original genetics; maybe some alcohol-protective genes (with other downsides) would predict a longer and better life for you, on average.

It was my understanding that native Americans have a genetically driven shortage of the second enzyme in the chain necessary for breaking down alcohol. My source was knowledgeable but not rigorous so take that as you will.

https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/alcohol-metabolism

Not exactly what you’re asking but there’s also a concept of genetic trauma, where some traumas can fundamentally change your offspring.

For example, your grandmother from your moms side technically made the egg cells that you were born from. That means that whatever your grandmother was going through could for example pass on all the way down to you.

>> For example, your grandmother from your moms side technically made the egg cells that you were born from.

That can't be right. Grandma gave mom a single cell. Mom's ovaries with grandpa's DNA too produced the egg leading to me. Or is there some element I'm not aware of that make it more like stated above?

I guess the egg cell you came from was made inside your grandma when your mom was an embryo in her. So the the cell was technically made inside your grandma’s body.

isn't the mother just providing the nourishment for the fetus to grow inside her? and the fetus itself, takes the nourishment, and actually producing the eggs inside itself?

So technically I don't think we can say the grandma is making the eggs directly, but has assisted in the fetus' creation, and then provided the nutrients/environment for the egg creation that the fetus itself makes (which yes, can influence things w/ the generational trauma science coming out...).

mom and dad also supply a half helix [single strand] of DNA, with conservation of state.

this passes on the structural features responsible for regulatory configuration

epigenetic modulation of penetrance, and/or heritability.

environment causes biochemical changes of the state of the DNA. methylation is a common phenomenon.

also, vertical transmission of DNA state facilitating transcription factor modulation of constituative expression. this one is a complex concept but is also a common example.

sums up to, physical state of DNA can be transferred and conserved, during replication.

Look into epigenetic inheritance. This is a mechanism by which environmental factors cause inheritable modulation of genes, which themselves are unchanged. Methylation (attachment of methyl groups) of DNA is one such mechanism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenerational_epigenetic_i...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41437-018-0113-y

Yeah but it has absolutely no explanatory power for sociological phenomenon. People want it to be true, but there's just no there there.

https://razib.substack.com/p/you-cant-take-it-with-you-strai...

Thanks for this link, it's an interesting and informative post. Gives me an additional PoV to consider.

> Yeah but it has absolutely no explanatory power for sociological phenomenon

That's a nice broad generality, but it doesn’t seem to be true. For instance, on the specific subject of thw thread, epigenetic changes related to chronic stress have demonstrated to have evidence of both (1) some intergenerational transmissibility, and (2) a role in alcoholism.

It this stage inherited “genetic trauma” is a fringe scientific theory.

Epigenetics is not fringe science - you inherit the methylation patterns from your parents' genes. Two people with the same genes can (in principle) have very different methylation patterns & thus differences in gene expression that result in changes in behaviour.

None of this is controversial.

That’s about parent’s environmental exposure affecting gene expression in their children. The notion that this can be passed down over multiple generations, where the parent’s generation wasn’t directly exposed to the environmental conditions, is fringe.

Its not “fringe”, it is demonstrated as a thing which occurs.

Some particular multigenerational effects may be controversial, speculative, or even fringe, but that multigenerational epigenetic effects exist is not at all fringe.

Confidently asserting that there is a generalized “concept of genetic trauma” that explains behavioral phenomena, as the poster did above, is not correct. The science on this is extremely limited: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190326-what-is-epigenet.... And it gets invoked by non-experts to support a lot of fringe assertions.

> genetic-exacerbated substance abuse

>Could you expand on this a bit? Not a concept I am familiar with

Its profitable to pretend that personal choices have nothing to do with drug addiction. Then you can "treat" them forever collecting a monthly check from the government. I say this having grown up in a drug house and leaving as a 16yo teenager with nothing. I already regret this comment not because it isn't true but people detached from reality are going to get all bent out of shape.

I know what you mean. Unfortunately, I can only give your comment a single upvote

> Its profitable to pretend that personal choices have nothing to do with drug addiction

That is true, and there are systemic issues we should fix.

However it is also true that some people will latch on to anything — “personal choices”, “systemic issues” — to justify callousness and lack of compassion. It’s an ugly way to live, always looking for some justification to spit on those who are in already in trouble.

Not the OP, but I think a larger factor here is fetal alcohol exposure, not epigenetics.

populations differ in how well they can handle booze. this has been known since Roman times; various authors wrote how the Germans were more prone to alcoholism than Latins, an ethnic difference that persists to this day.

native americans have it particularly bad, and have for centuries. colonist traders exploited it for profit, missionaries tried to stamp it out, Indian leaders often campaigned to keep rum out of their territories, etc.

There are definitely some social/environmental factors but there's enough anecdotal smoke around a genetic predisposition in some populations that the search for fire and causation is underway.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9603607/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30852706/

Also, Pine Ridge is literally the poorest location in America and the only way out of the poverty is to leave, which means leaving behind your family, your tribe, and your culture.

There's like 25 businesses there for a population of thousands. There's no good reason for people to drive through the reservation, a few handfuls of trucks, and the land isn't good for much other than to look at or feed some cows.

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