In this discussion, we learned more about biological studies involving the human genome. This lecture was interesting to listen to because as an american studies major I have learned about studies of the human genome in the past and have looked at them with a critical eye before this lecture. Keeping that in mind, after this discussion I really feel like the majority of these studies and projects end up trying to state the same claim that we are all more similar to each other than we realize. I think in this lecture we learned that the opposite effect can be achieved through these studies however, because many people wanted to declare or claim their own independence despite any evidence proving similarities in the human genome.
I thought in light of this line of thinking, hearing about the efforts through Indian Genome Variation to unite people through this variation and I feel like that is exactly the initiative that needs to be taken by more people about this topic of research. As the lecture continued we learned from Dr. Mukharji that this effort itself might be repeating the same issues brought up by previous studies throughout history around this topic and might be causing further divergence from unity.
I thought the most startling part of the lecture to me was learning how some of the most famous case studies on this topic have such a small subject pool. I forget which study specifically Dr. Mukharji referenced but it was either Harvard or Princeton and was frequently referenced as one of the more credible studies. Yet this study only had a subject total of slightly over 100 which clearly would never be sufficient to cover statistics on such a large population of people. This is the main issue with these studies and is one that is not simple to fix because there is no easy way to test one million people’s DNA and compare all of their genomes.
I think this is all extremely intriguing to consider in relation to our current political and social climate surrounding facts and the media in general. Most of these studies don’t get much media coverage but some are definitely still included in student textbooks and referenced as if they are solidly grounded by evidence when in reality they don’t represent accurate data for an entire population. Especially considering how often people claim science is concrete and how facts are all we can trust in rely on in our modern age, it is appalling to think that studies such as these can be trusted as fact and taught in schools when they are sending such mixed messages and making us less unified as people. This has me thinking in conjunction with some of my other classes this year involving longer research projects and how I might be able to look into some of these studies throughout history and perhaps see the critical scholarly reactions to them throughout the years and compare that to the reactions we have to them in our contemporary age.