schizophrenia and immigration

something else from The Diversity Illusion:

“Diversity can make people unhappy; it may even drive them mad. In London studies have shown higher incidence of schizophrenia, suicide and self-harm among ethnic minorities living in neighbourhoods with fewer people of the same group, than in areas where they are dominant, even when they are more affluent.83 Under the Marxist consensus this was always explained as a product of discrimination and prejudice, which could be solved through anti-racism measures. The mental health profession is even accused of racism because it disproportionately sections members of some groups. When in 2007 psychologist Swaran Singh co-published a systematic review pooling data from all British studies of detention of ethnic minorities under the Mental Health Act, and found no evidence that higher rates of detention were due to racism, he was denounced in public. And yet, he wrote, ‘careful studies in different countries have shown that rates of serious mental illnesses are high in all migrant ethnic minorities, indicating that this is a function of migration rather than ethnicity. Researchers have used culturally neutral assessment scales devised by the WHO, rated the assessments blind to ethnic origin of the patients, and even had psychiatrists from the Caribbean recheck the diagnoses. The findings stand’.84

“Mental illness is a part of the immigrant’s experience, a process that can be sad, stressful and isolating, sometimes even more so for the second generation. In 1932 Ornulf Odegaard, a Norwegian psychiatrist, reported high rates of schizophrenia among his countrymen in Minnesota, and it seems unlikely that this can be explained by the racism of American natives towards blue-eyed Nordic immigrants. And higher rates of psychosis in migrants have since been reported in several countries. A 2011 University of California report found that levels of mental illness were far higher among Mexicans in the US than Mexicans back home. As Dr Singh said: ‘Childhood exposure to economic adversity, family breakdown, social exclusion and living in areas with poor social cohesion all increase the risk. Ethnic minorities have higher rates of psychosis as they are much more likely to suffer these adversities….’

“High mental illness rates are caused by the shock of dislocation and diversity, a shock that can be sustained with community support. As Dr Singh explained, in minority groups ‘values and beliefs, family structure and community norms…can bolster resilience and reduce the impact of adversity’.” [kindle locations 1809-1834]

i’ve read about this before. what i’d like to do, though, is flip the premise on its head, jayman-style:

what if it’s not migration — and winding up in a diverse setting — that results in schizophrenia (and other mental illnesses?), but rather what if schizophrenic people — or individuals predisposed to getting schizophrenia — are more likely to emigrate?

assistant village idiot?

previously: “the diversity illusion”

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“the diversity illusion”

if you don’t follow me on twitter, you will have missed my flurry of quotes yesterday from telegraph journalist ed west‘s excellent new book, The Diversity Illusion: What We Got Wrong About Immigration & How to Set it Right. (john derbyshire likes it, too, btw!)

the book is about the situation in britain, but an awful lot of what west has to say can be applied to the u.s. and elsewhere as well. i’m about halfway through it, so i still haven’t gotten to the “setting it right” part yet, but i’m gonna share some of my favorite bits so far with you right now (some of these might be a repeat from yesterday — sorry!). ok, here we go:

“In over sixty years of enormous change such debate [about immigration] had been restricted by taboo, fear and mockery. Immigration is the most thought about and least talked about subject in British history.“ [kindle locations 173-175]
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“Never in modern history has a free population simply suppressed discussion of a major issue. As Kevin Myers noted, the people of Britain and Ireland ‘have taken a secret, Self-Denying Ordinance not to discuss immigration or race in any meaningful way’. In living memory barely a newspaper article, radio or television show has seriously questioned the diversity orthodoxy, and even in the intelligent Right-wing press scepticism has had to be couched in such a cryptic way that the paper’s horoscopes are more candid.” [kindle locations 202-205]
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“Labour’s attempts at creating a truly multicultural society have unquestionably succeeded. But why did the Government do this? What drove them towards imposing such an enormous change on England, one that will have profound, long-lasting and irreversible effects? And why did the entire political class go along with it? What, indeed, are the benefits of diversity? …

“[E]veryone in a position of power held the same opinion. Diversity was a good in itself, so making Britain truly diverse would enrich it and bring ‘significant cultural contributions’, reflecting a widespread belief among the ruling classes that multiculturalism and cultural, racial and religious diversity were morally positive things whatever the consequences. This is the unthinking assumption held by almost the entire political, media and education establishment. It is the diversity illusion.“ [kindle locations 344-346 and 386-389]
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“A belief in the benefits of a multicultural, multi-racial society is an article of faith in today’s largely atheist society; to not believe is to not be in communion.“ [kindle locations 411-412]
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“Liberalism on race (and many other subjects) is a status signifier…. If ‘Pygmalion’ were performed on the stage today Eliza Doolittle would not blurt out ‘not bloody likely’ but ‘bloody immigrants’.” [kindle locations 731 & 737-738]
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“[R]acism, or what anti-racists understand as racism, is a universal part of human nature, ‘as human as love’ as novelist Thomas Keneally put it. Racial *hatred*, however, is different, a pathological variation of that human preference for sameness and kinship. One might regret that, just as one might regret that greed, lust and violence are part of human nature, but building a society based on the assumption that they can be driven out through re-education is an optimistic idea.” [kindle locations 1009-1012]
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“Writing about Tibet, liberal blogger Dave Osler once stated that China ‘has resettled Han Chinese colonists there to the point where Tibetans are at risk of becoming a minority in their own homeland’. On his own country he declared that ‘further mass immigration obviously has the potential to rejuvenate the population of this island once the politicians can get their head round the idea’. Tibetans becoming a minority in their country are a threatened species; the English are being ‘rejuvenated. Of course the Tibetans have no choice in becoming a minority, yet when the British express their opposition to ‘rejuvenation’ they are condemned as racists.” [kindle locations 1145-1150]

heh.
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“Globalism has many benefits, but mixed with universalism it can become an ideological dogma that ignores the human consequences. Phillippe Legrain asks: ‘Why can computers be imported from China duty-free but Chinese people not freely come to make computer here? Why is it a good thing for workers to move within a country to where the jobs are, but a bad thing for people to move between countries for the same reason?’ That is because human beings are not computers. Goods can be freely moved about only because they can be discarded when they are no longer useful; humans cannot. Immigration is long-term and has permanent effects for everyone involved.“ [kindle locations 1279-1284]
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“The universalist ideal rests on the belief that human beings are willing to share such a collective system with the rest of humanity. But evolutionary psychology suggests that humans have developed kin selection, those tribes with the strongest sense of in-group altruism being the most likely to survive…. No universal altruism has evolved because a sense of universal altruism would have no evolutionary advantage. Garrett Hardin argued in a 1982 essay, ‘Discriminating Altruisms’, that a world without borders or distinctions is impossible, because groups that practise unlimited altruism will be eliminated in favour of those that limit altruistic behaviour to smaller groups, from whom they receive benefits.

“An extreme example of this is the white liberal environmentalist who decides, for the good of the planet, that he or she should remain childless – the result being that future generations will contain fewer white liberals (some might argue that that’s not a terrible thing).” [kindle locations 1660-1669]
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finally:

“The latest projections suggest that white Britons will become a minority sometime around 2066, in a population of 80 million, which means that within little over a century Britain will have gone from an almost entirely homogenous society to one where the native ethnic group is a minority. That is, historically, an astonishing transformation. No people in history have become a minority of the citizenry in their own country except through conquest, yet the English, always known for their reticence, may actually achieve this through embarrassment.” [kindle locations 142-146]
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great stuff!

i’ll stop there because i can’t (or shouldn’t) reproduce the entire book here. (~_^) read it yourselves! i highly recommend it.

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linkfest – 02/18/13

A Genetic Code for Genius? – more on the bgi project.

Genetic components of political preference – “[I]ndividuals tend to have a broad, evolution-based orientation toward being more conservative or liberal about various elements, such as protecting their in-group. That in-group orientation can translate into preferences on political issues such as reproductive rights, immigration, and war, as well as political behaviors such as voting behavior and political participation.”

Baby-making among non-whites by political orientation over time – from the awesome epigone.

Higher Levels of Neanderthal Ancestry in East Asians Than in Europeans (Wall et al. 2013) – @dienekes’.

Gildea (1992): A lost IQ study of transracially adopted Koreans – from jason malloy.

Unchanging Essence – “Shea says that no anthropologist in his right mind would think that existing cultural variation among humans had anything to do with genetic differences between existing populations. It will be interesting to discover the alleles that made him say that.” – heh. – from greg cochran.

Obama Seeking to Boost Study of Human Brain – “The Obama administration is planning a decade-long scientific effort to examine the workings of the human brain and build a comprehensive map of its activity, seeking to do for the brain what the Human Genome Project did for genetics.” – via steve sailer.

Peter Turchin on the Big Picture – (on “cycles of inequality”) – from steve sailer.

Memory of chimps ‘far better than human’

Why Almost Everyone in Russia Has a Dash Cam – “The sheer size of the country, combined with lax — and often corrupt — law enforcement, and a legal system that rarely favors first-hand accounts of traffic collisions has made dash cams all but a requirement for motorists. ‘You can get into your car without your pants on, but never get into a car without a dash cam,’ Aleksei Dozorov, a motorists’ rights activist in Russia told Radio Free Europe last year.”

Why Children Must Inherit Their Last Names from Their Father, Not Their Mother – from kanazawa.

Bacteria boost fixes symptoms of autism in mice – “[I]nfecting pregnant mice with molecules from a flu virus caused autism-like symptoms in their offspring. The pups were less social, squeaked less and displayed repetitive behaviours. They also had a ‘leaky’ gastrointestinal tract that allowed bacteria to move in and out of the lining. In addition, the bacteria present in their gut were significantly different from that found in mice without autism-like behaviour. Studies in humans have also identified links between gut bacteria and autism. For example, a 2011 study identified a significant lack of Bacteroides in children with autism.”

How Napoleon Chagnon Became Our Most Controversial Anthropologist – “He spent much of the past decade working on a memoir instead’ ‘Noble Savages: My Life Among Two Dangerous Tribes — the Yanomamö and the Anthropologists,’ which comes out this month.” – heh.

The Weird Irony at the Heart of the Napoleon Chagnon Affair – definitely all very weird.

bonus: The Pilgrims as Illegal Aliens – “Letting in immigrants means letting in your future rulers.”

bonus bonus: Illegal Immigrations and Black Unemployment – “It’s peculiar … that those who can usually be counted on to highlight any disparity between blacks and whites — whatever the reason and no matter how slight the disparity – have said not a word about the effect of illegal immigration on blacks.”

bonus bonus bonus: Sea slug loses penis after sex but grows another the next day – “Invertebrate may discard organ like a dirty needle to avoid carrying competitors’ sperm.” – ouch!

bonus bonus bonus bonus: Bronze Age beads that are worth their weight in gold: 4,000-year-old burial chest unearthed on Dartmoor ‘one of most significant historical finds in a century’

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Could the sea be conscious? Research reveals how tiny plankton behave like a marine ‘megamind’

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Debate Continues: Did Your Seafood Feel Pain? – “Scientists disagree on whether your seafood suffered.”

bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus bonus: Norway jails Rwandan for 21 years over role in 1994 genocide — “Similar cases against Rwandans have been brought in neighbouring Sweden, Finland and Denmark.” — nordic countries’ jurisdictions extend globally (perhaps even throughout the entire solar system?) — just thought you should know.

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so … why ban cousin marriages?

update 02/01: i’ve tried to leave a couple of (very civil, of course) comments on huffpost — to try to, you know, have a conversation about the bans on cousin marriage in parts of the u.s. — but to no avail. my comments are not allowed through moderation. just thought i’d share.

another update 02/01: on huffpost, somebody calling themselves tylerious linked to this from wikipedia:

“A BBC report discussed Pakistanis in Britain, 55% of whom marry a first cousin. Given the high rate of such marriages, many children come from repeat generations of first-cousin marriages. The report states that these children are 13 times more likely than the general population to produce children with genetic disorders, and one in ten children of first-cousin marriages in Birmingham either dies in infancy or develops a serious disability. The BBC also states that Pakistani-Britons, who account for some 3% of all births in the UK, produce ‘just under a third” of all British children with genetic illnesses.’”

that is exactly the point i made in the first section (“disease”) of my original post below, i.e. in regularly inbreeding societies, the risks of genetic defects are higher than what dr. younus quoted. the figures he quoted are for western societies with little inbreeding.
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jayman tweeted about an article written by a dr. faheem younus and published (originally) in the huffington post entitled “Why Ban Cousin Marriages?” dr. younus writes (link added by me):

“[L]et’s be clear. I don’t intent to *promote* cousin marriages. But when 25 US states ban such marriages in a free society, we ought to at least have a conversation about it.”

absolutely! i agree. (see entire blog…. (~_^) )

dr. younus, who is orginally from pakistan btw, goes on to present arguments against what he calls “the ‘Disease-Incest-Einstein’ line of American reasoning” that stands in opposition to cousin marriage — in other words “you don’t have to be an Einstein to know that incestuous relationships lead to diseases in the babies.” he attempts to show how these three objections to cousin marriage — disease (or congenital conditions), incest (the ewwww factor), and that all smart people know it’s a bad thing — are just flat out wrong….
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1) disease. dr. younus says:

“The risk of birth defects in children born to first cousins is increased from a baseline of 3-4 percent to 4-7 percent according to the National Society of Genetic Councilors (NSGC). In this modern age, this risk could be mitigated by mandating — as the State of Maine has done — pre-marital genetic testing. The NSGC, however, considers the risk to be so insignificant that it does not recommend additional testing or screening.”

the above statement demonstrates a gross misunderstanding on dr. younus’ part of the risks of congenital conditions in consanguineous relationships. sure the risk of birth defects in children born to first cousins is pretty low (4-7%) in the united states (and other western countries) where cousin marriage is not the usual practice. but in societies where cousin marriage is the norm (egs. saudia arabia, pakistan, afghanistan, sudan), the risks are much higher. in, for instance, dr. younus’s country of origin, pakistan [pdf]:

“It is estimated that about 10 percent of congenital and genetic disorders worldwide are associated with customary consanguineous marriage; in most of the Middle East, the proportion is 30 percent, and in Pakistan, it is 40 percent.“

the higher (much higher) risks of birth defects from cousin marriages in these other societies are a result of the fact that these populations have been practicing cousin marriage for generations — many, many generations. probably for literally millennia in saudi arabia and nearly as long, if not as long, in south asia.

when you have multiple (upon multiple) generations of inbreeding, cousins from these families will inevitably share many more genes in common on average — including genes related to diseases — than cousins in western societies where there is little inbreeding. the inbreeding coefficient of first cousins is usually reckoned at 6.25%, but this can be twice as high in long-term, regularly inbreeding populations — such as in pakistan.

in addition, as my long-suffering regular readers already know, the type of cousin marriage favored in the arab world and places like pakistan and afghanistan — father’s brother’s daughter (fbd) cousin marriage — leads to even greater inbreeding than other forms of cousin marriage (cross-cousin marriage, for instance) since it promotes a tendency towards double-first-cousin marriages (see previous posts for more on why this is — here and here and here).

all of this amounts to no small set of problems. the saudis and other arab nations have probably spent something like half their oil profits (<<possible hyperbole alert) on studying and trying to come up with solutions to deal with all of the genetic defects connected to consanguineous mating in their populations, and concerns were recently raised about the high rates of genetic defects in the u.k.’s pakistani population, a highly consanguineous group.
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2) incest. dr. younus says:

“As you cross the scientific hurdles, you will be confronted with a mountain of taboo cloaked in words like ‘gross,’ ‘icky,’ ‘yucky. But where do such taboo feelings originate from? Not a single verse in the Torah, Bible or Quran — books revered by three billion followers of the three Abrahamic religions — prohibits cousin marriage, which were common in Jewish, Christian and Islamic history.”

uh … no, actually. cousin or other close marriages have, indeed, been common in jewish and islamic societies, but not so much in christian societies. i should qualify that: not so much in european christian societies.

again this is familiar ground for my regular readers out there — cousin marriage began to be banned by the christian church in europe as early as the 500s. since then, cousin marriage has been banned to various degrees and at various points in time by the roman catholic church, the eastern orthodox church, and even some of the protestant churches — not to mention secular authorities. (for more on this, see my mating patterns in europe series below ↓ in the left-hand column, and jack goody’s The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe and michael mitterauer’s Why Europe?, in particular chapter three).

the avoidance of cousin marriage has been especially strong over the past one thousand to fifteen-hundred years in northern and western europe (with some notable exceptions) — and a bit weaker (or having a later commencement) in eastern and southern europe. (there have also been some pockets of long-standing close marriage practices in northwestern europe — see the auvergnats in france and the border reivers of england whose descendents moved to appalachia for example).

since a large percentage of americans are of northwest european extraction, it shouldn’t be surprising that they aren’t fond of the thought of cousin marriage. whether they experience an ewwww response to the thought of cousin marriage for cultural reasons, or perhaps even biological ones, i don’t think it’s unreasonable that they (we) should desire american society — which was founded by northwest europeans after all — to remain one in which cousin marriage is not a regular occurence.
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3) einstein. dr. younus says:

“This is the ultimate argument made in support of banning cousin marriages. It’s so obviously wrong that ‘You don’t have to be an Einstein to figure it out.’ In the evidence driven societies we have a different word to describe such claims: myth. Myths are best broken by data. The fact that 20 percent of global marriages take place between first cousins and most societies, including Europe and Canada, consider cousin marriages to be legal should give us a pause.“

just because a lot of people in the world do something does not necessarily mean that it’s a good idea.

research has shown strong negative correlations between inbreeding rates and national average iqs — in other words, the greater the amount of inbreeding, the lower the average national iq — see here and here. there is also a pretty strong correlation between consanguinity rates and corruption levels (see also here) — the greater the amount of cousin marriage, the greater the amount of corruption in a society. finally, there is a strong negative correlation between cousin marriage and democracy — the more cousin marriage in a society, the less democratic it’s likely to be (see here).

it’s not completely clear, yet, why any of this should be — i have my own theories which you can find by poking around on the blog (if you’re really curious, you could do worse than starting here or here) — but whatever the reasons behind these not-so-optimal connections between cousin marriage and the characteristics of a modern, open, and free society, it doesn’t take an einstein to figure out that the two DO NOT seem to go together.
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see also: Cousin Marriage Conundrum by steve sailer, Veil of Fears by stanley kurtz, and Consanguinity prevents Middle Eastern political development by parapundit.

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immigration

think there’s too much of it (to the u.s.) right now?

support vdare! they’re practically the only ones talking about it nowadays.

scandinavian shuffle

does this make any sense? to anybody?

“Sweden pays jobless youth to move to Norway”
“31 Oct 2012

“A Swedish town has taken to paying people to look for work in Norway in an attempt to reduce soaring youth unemployment….”

meanwhile:

“Sweden to get 50,000 asylum seekers in 2013″
“29 Oct 12

“Over 50,000 asylum seekers are expected to come to Sweden next year, according to the latest prognosis from the Swedish Migration Board (Migrationsverket), pushing the country’s capacity past its limits….”

huh?

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quarter of u.k. babies born to immigrants

you’ve seen these sorts of numbers before, but … just a reminder. from the daily mail:

“A quarter of all babies born in the UK are the children of immigrants as mothers from Poland, India and Pakistan give birth in record numbers”

“Almost a quarter of babies born in the UK are children of immigrants, according to latest statistics.

“There were 808,000 births in the UK last year, of which 196,000 were to non-UK born mothers – or 24 per cent….

“Polish women who live in the UK gave birth to around 23,000 children last year.

“Women from Pakistan had 19,200 babies in the same period and Indian women gave birth to 15,500 children.

“Four in 10 children born to immigrant mothers were born in London.

“Half were born in other parts of England, and one in 10 were born in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland combined.

“The ONS said fertility rates for non-UK born women are higher than those born in the UK….”

here’s the money quote chart — general fertility rate (gfr)=“the annual number of live births per 1,000 women of childbearing age”:

and, of course, all these data are only tracking immigrant women BORN abroad — there are also plenty of pakistani, polish, etc., women in the u.k. that were born IN the u.k. now having babies as well.

see also hail’s post: France Reaches 30% Diversity Among Newborns

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linkfest – 06/17/12

More on Farming and Inheritance Systems – Part I: IQ – from jayman!

Spanish cave paintings shown as oldest in world – “New tests show that crude Spanish cave paintings of a red sphere and handprints are the oldest in the world, so ancient they may not have been by modern man. Some scientists say they might have even been made by the much-maligned Neanderthals, but others disagree.”

Childhood obesity found linked to math performance – “When compared with children who were never obese, boys and girls whose obesity persisted from the start of kindergarten through fifth grade performed worse on the math test, starting in first grade, and their lower performance continued through fifth grade. For boys whose obesity emerged later (in third or fifth grade), no such differences were found, and for girls who became obese later, poorer math performance was temporary.”

Why Smart People Are Stupid – “[I]ntelligence seems to make things worse. The scientists gave the students four measures of ‘cognitive sophistication.’ As they report in the paper, all four of the measures showed positive correlations, ‘indicating that more cognitively sophisticated participants showed larger [cognitive] bias blind spots.’”

Another look at Muslim fertility – from the inductivist.

Spot the Correlation: Wealth vs. Immigration – from dennis.

Scientists Sequence Genome Of Human Relative That Prefers Love Over War – “They found that more than 3 percent of the human genome is more closely related to either the bonobo or the chimpanzee than the two apes are to each other, which indicates that the three species share a complex evolutionary relationship.”

bonus: ‘Sexual depravity’ of penguins that Antarctic scientist dared not reveal – “Landmark polar research about the Adélie penguin’s sex life by Captain Scott’s expedition, deemed too shocking for the public 100 years ago, is unearthed at the Natural History Museum”

bonus bonus: ‘Oldest galaxy’ discovered using Hawaii telescope – “Japanese astronomers on Hawaii say they have found a galaxy 12.91bn light years away”

bonus bonus bonus: That Squid On Your Plate Could Inseminate Your Mouth – ewww!

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