1931

Yeah. I’ve heard and read the same, shorten the lifespan but still live long enough to have children thus keep the population going thus better than the death to malaria. It’s still a shame it’s not heavily funded, but hey this is promising.

1932

On some level, the lack of funding is directly related to the fact that it essentially doesn’t show up in people of European descent at all. Those are the folks with the money, and basically none of them have sickle cell, because they didn’t evolve where there was malaria.

1933

That’s why I put it here. There are other groups that have more carriers, I think Jewish has a higher than average, but the about 6 million Africans that have it deserve some attention. With any luck, this topic will show up again in the science is awesome topic within a number of years.

1934

Actually it’s the carriers. Having just one gene helps confer malarial resistance and the carrier rate in Africa is very high. So over thousands of years carriers vastly out-survived their non-carrier brethren allowing it to propagate way beyond what should have normally happened. Having full blown Sickle Cell was not only a death sentence, but often put exceptional care difficulties on family units or they were left behind when going through SC crisis.

We had hypothesized a similar theory for carriers of Cystic Fibrosis in Europe where the primary mutation originated (delta f508). That mutation accounts for 75% of all Cystic patients. Based on the mortality of the children who had it (life expectancy was 6 years of age or less) it never should have hit that kind frequency. We hypothesized carriers had a better chance of surviving Tuberculosis or Plague than those without. So the familial losses from the disease was over-compensated for by the parents and non-CF children having a far better chance to survive and propagate.

I’m not sure where the research went from there. Not exactly easy to prove the plague link.

1935

Definitely not. With SCA and malaria, it’s ongoing. Thankfully although the plague remains around it’s not mass spread and the records then wouldn’t be that good if they exist at all.

Thank you for clarifying though. I just remember being terrified of this diseases because I didn’t understand, no one talked about it, and I watch a little boy (character) die from it on TV. Back then you had just enough info in the library to find out it was real but no one was really breaking it down now for an average joe or jane to understand like they do now.

1936

Later, Lewis — asked for his advice — counseled Clark against freeing York.

America’s history should be black history, but they keep removing black people from it to make it prettier. But we seem fine with making sure southern traitors get their due.

1937

When I was attending the Univeristy of Michigan and was in the hospital there I was in for 4 weeks and became best friends with a girl who had severe Sickle Cell. She went into SC crisis all too often and it was incredibly painful. Felt so bad for her. She was such a good person and quite the trooper.

1938

Oh poor thing. I’ve heard it is very, very painful although I have never met anyone with the disease, that I know of.

One of the reasons I have my stance on MJ that I do, despite not one to really do recreational drugs, is I want people not to be in pain. It’s really that simple. If someone has a really painful condition and we can help ease that, seems like we should let them do that.

The thing on Cystic Fibrosis was all new info for me. I get a lot of late breaking, look at these new procedures, drugs and stuff due to the industry I work in, but the one thing most of those have in common is a lot of money, a lot of attention and so the research is there. Anything that has a tiny fraction of the population, like one genetic group AND there isn’t a celebrity attached to it seems to struggle.

The good news is, the work in gene therapy… that has a far reaching branch, cancer, these diseases, like as they/we discover more the applications of what is discovered could be very remarkable.

1940

I have the thalassemia trait and a minor version which translates to occasional anaemia and the odd episode where im tired and weak but its never defined me or been a lifestyle issue with care/medication required. I also lived in a malarial zone for a year and wasnt taking anti-malarials and stayed malaria free but that might have been luck rather than the trait. I’d be interested to know if i was malaria immune though.

1941
1942

Man, that’s sad. I used to go to the Lewis & Clark museum under the Arch in St. Louis a lot. I hope they include excerpts from these letters there.

I still know people with these kinds of attitudes by the way, but now towards employees who dare ask for a raise or a day off:

1943

I can’t really find an article that says what they’re asking for or if the source of the conflict was his time as a mayor and some unfortunate choices from then. But again, not sure what the ask is.

My understanding is their success of that expedition was in no smaller contributed by him, but as you can see, neither of them really considered him a human with reasonable needs and wants and, well yeah sad is a great word for it.

These facts make people so uncomfortable, but hopefully they push more and more in these areas where minorities, of any group contributed or were notable in some way but largely just left out of history. It sounds like we really don’t know what happened to him in the end too.

1944

I don’t think they really have a specific ask.

1945

That unfortunate. Black Lives Matter is kind of a loose organization, but they generally have some requests with those protests. Pete’s a young guy. He can learn, but they gotta at least tell him what they’re asking for, and if they want to hold him accountable for his past choices, what it looks like going forward to show he knows how to do better.

This also sounds like it’s maybe not a sanctioned/organized protect by any chapter.

1946

Apparently they said that some “outside group” funded their protesting Pete, although they said it wasn’t another campaign.

1947

Just some outside group, a random group, funded their protests/trip, but it’s not campaign related. That seems… unlikely. But let’s say it’s not another campaign, than what does this special interest want?

As far as I know, this could be slightly wrong, Black Lives Matter is not really endorsing a specific candidate for this election. It wouldn’t really make sense for them to do that really. What they can do though it make their expectations clear, per chapter or as a group, and challenge anyone’s record in areas that matter to the organization.

Long form of saying, their approach doesn’t make sense to me. Normally this group shows up where someone has died or an injustice was done… and the ask is often vague but still obvious… we want justice.

1948

So wait. There are BLM mercenary groups?

1949

It seems likely that they were paid to protest Pete by some PAC allied with another candidate.

Not paid like “SOROS HIRED ACTORS”, but rather just had their travel and stuff funded.

1950

Being funded by groups to protest specific people kind of hurts the whole movement.

It’s smells of “paid protesting”. You know, the thing that the far-right accuses every protester of being all the time.

1951

Yeah. That’s how I saw it.