On Ayn Rand on Racism

A twin study of weight loss and metabolic efficiency. V Hainer, A Stunkard, M Kunesova, J Parizkova, V Stich, DB Allison. International Journal of Obesity, 2001, Vol 25, Iss 4, pp 533-537. Hainer V, Charles Univ, Gen Fac Hosp, Obes Management Ctr, Lannova 2, Prague 11000 1, CZECH REPUBLIC

Cited here:

A study from Czechoslovakia showed that obesity is inherited. Czechoslovakia has a registry of twins who are separated from each other at birth and given to foster parents.

Many years later, researchers located the twins and found that they were equally likely to be obese and have the same resting metabolic rate, which is a measure of how many calories they burn while they are doing nothing. Obesity in the twins had little to do with whether the foster parents were obese or skinny, what the parents and children ate, or how much they exercised. Since obesity appears to be inherited, doctors must look for a genetic cause. So far, we know that the stomachs of obese people produce too little ghrelin, one of the hormones that control hunger. Obesity will eventually be cured by a specific medical treatment, not by fad diets.

http://www.drmirkin.com/nutrition/1348.html

 

Then, enter "how obesity is acquired" into your browser:

Acquired obesity and poor physical fitness impair expression of genes of mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation in monozygotic twins discordant for obesity.

 

Defects in expression of genes of oxidative phosphorylation in mitochondria have been suggested to be a key pathophysiological feature in familial insulin resistance. We examined whether such defects can arise from lifestyle-related factors alone. Fourteen obesity-discordant (BMI difference 5.2 +/- 1.8 kg/m(2)) and 10 concordant (1.0 +/- 0.7 kg/m(2)) monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs aged 24-27 yr were identified ...   This implies that acquired poor physical fitness is associated with defective expression of the oxidative pathway components in adipose tissue mitochondria.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18460597

This is just a variation on an old theme: environment versus heredity.  The important difference is that epigenetics attempts to find chemical events as responses to environment - fear, anger, hunger, anxiiety, happiness, ecstasis - that affect genetic transfer heritability.  Again (for the third time, at least) if you explore the available literature, you will find compelling evidence to substantiate the claim that what we learn changes that which we pass on. 

PBS Nova: Epigenetics here

PBS Nova: The Ghost in Your Genes here

How You Can Change Your Genes (Time Magazine) here

And "Insight" Summary from Nature magazine here

Backgrounder on Epigenetics from Johns Hopkins here

 The two basic rules of classification are: 1. a single principle or set of principles should be used consistently so that the categories (species) are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive; and 2. the principles used should be essential ones.

The terms "mutually exclusive" and "jointly exhaustive" may not be familiar to you, but their meaning is implicit in the old saying, "a place for everything and everything in its place." Lets start with the second half of the saying. The goal of classification is to put each item in its place - to assign each member of the genus to a species. But we cannot assign an item to one particular species if it belongs to more than one.  Suppose you tried to classify your courses into the following categories: art, biology, history, economics and introductory. Where would you put "Introduction to Art?"  Because your categories overlap, we don't know whether to classify this as an introductory course or an art course.  The first rule of classification, then, is that the species must not overlap.  We express this logic by saying the species must be mutually exclusive: each species must exclude all members of every other species.