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Sickle Cell Analytical Essay

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Crawford 1
Discussions in regards to race can be fraught with extreme opinions, to examine this subject in a more dispassionate light it is helpful to first define the terms. Race is distinctly different from ethnicity or culture, but is often combined in both writing and thought. From a biological perspective, the description of race in human populations is meaningless, but examined from a cultural basis it can make an enormous difference to a population’s wellbeing, or survival, based solely on their difference in morphology.
Biological divisions based on skin color or epicanthic eye fold are two of the broadest categories of morphologic difference. Skin color can range from, albino, pinkish tan, tan, brown, dark brown and black with varying degrees of color …show more content…

Sickle cell anemia is caused by an altered form of hemoglobin that conferred resistance to malaria and the increase of this alteration correlates to the change in agricultural techniques in Africa, which started to favor slash and burn farming, which allowed standing pools of water where mosquitos, (the vector), could breed. This type of farming with the concomitant concentration of humans in those farming areas, selected for the adaptation of the allele that causes sickle cell, due to environmental and cultural changes, (Heredity and Evolution). Lactose intolerance is common in all parts of the world, the ability to digest milk is a genetic mutation that allows the body to continue producing lactase, which allows the digestion of milk products after weaning age. Genetic studies and archeological records suggest that this mutation arose approximately seventy-five hundred years ago in the middle east and north Africa and slowly dispersed to Europe, this adaptation conferred an advantage by allowing the use of milk as sustenance, and hydration in times of

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