Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past

by David Reich

Scientists interested in studying genetic variation in Native American populations feel frustrated with this situation. I understand something of the devastation that the coming of Europeans and Africans to the Americas wrought on Native American populations, and its effects are also evident everywhere in the data I and my colleagues analyze. But I am not aware of any cases in which research in molecular biology including genetics—a field that has arisen almost entirely since the end of the Second World War—has caused major harm to historically persecuted groups. Of course, there have been well-documented cases of the use of biological material in ways that may not have been appreciated by the people from whom it was taken, not just in Native Americans. For example, the cervical cancer tumor cells of Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman from Baltimore, were distributed after her death, without her consent and without the knowledge of her family, to thousands of laboratories around the world, where they have become a mainstay of cancer research.15 But overall there is an argument to be made that modern studies of DNA variation—not just in Native Americans, but also in many other groups including the San of southern Africa, Jews, the Roma of Europe, and tribal or caste groups from South Asia—are a force for good, contributing to the understanding and treatment of disease in these populations, and breaking down fixed ideas of race that have been used to justify discrimi...

This is ironic