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In The News: Dr. James Watson

Jamál (Beauty), 14 Sharaf (Honor) 175 B.E. - Sunday, January 13, 2019

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Open your local paper or browse online for a news story headline that grabs your attention and share it with us. Try to venture outside your comfort zone and read a story you wouldn’t normally read or even one from another country!

The article I found most interesting and scary was James Watson: Scientist loses titles after claims over race   on the BBC News   home page. I find it scary because there are people who will agree with, and use, Dr. Watson's "unsubstantiated and reckless"1 views as gospel. While genetics does play a roll in intelligence, it is not the cause of any differences intelligence between blacks and whites on IQ tests. The difference are caused by other factors that have little or nothing to do with genetics or skin color.

Dr. Watson did a great service for humanity in 1953, when he assisted--Maurice Wilkins and Francis Crick--in discovering the double helix structure of DNA. However, Dr. Watson does a great disservice to the human race by holding to outdated and narrow views of skin color as being a determinant in intelligence. Since 1953 several new discoveries about DNA have proved that humanity is a single species. Two of these examples are those about mitochondrial2 and y-chromosone3 DNA. Both of these discoveries suggest that humans today are descended from two individuals who probably lived in Africa. New discoveries push back the date of our common ancestors, and some show that there is Neanderthal DNA in some of us.

As for skin color, that is the results of our ancestors migration out of Africa. In colder climates a lighter skin tone assisted our ancestors to survive. Humanity is a single species, which had physically adapted to the various climate across the planet. This adaption is revealed in our genetic code, which holds the key to our future adaption and medical discoveries that will help the race survive.

Footnotes
1  Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory quoted in https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46856779.
2  Inherited from the mother.
3  Inherited from the father.