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Sickle Cell Anemia, Human Variation And Race

1910 marks the period that sickle-cell anemia was linked to race. In Chicago Dr. James Herrick detailed a “new disorder” that he located in a black patient from the Caribbean who was ill with lesions and fatigue. Dr. Herrick described the illness as “anemia with peculiar and elongated red blood cells”(Tapper, 1). By the 1920s laboratory medicine grew and several other physicians named these elongated red blood cells “sickle-cell.” Sickle-cell disease includes numerous conditions resulting from inheriting the HbS either homozygously or as a compound heterozygote with other abnormal hemoglobin genes (McElroy, 23). During the foundational period for research, physicians who concentrated their work in sickling, “sickle cell trait, a genetic mutation, and sickle cell anemia, the disease that affects persons who inherit the mutated gene from both parents” (Tapper, 1) emphasized racial markers. The fact that the vast majority of people in the United States with sickling are of African descent helps to fuel the inaccurate idea that it is a black phenomenon.

Sickling researchers introduce history and geography to explain the disease as “black related.” The most prevalent space for sickling, early observers repo


In conclusion, in spite of its origin being confined to West Africa, because of the geographical and environmental variation, it has been identified that HbS and HbC mutation is identical in different racial groups all over the globe; the clinical and haematological features of the disease vary markedly. The history of sickling and sickle cell disease provides a window to explore medicine, disease, race, evolution, and migration. Hopefully, someday soon there will be a cure for this horrific disease and people such as myself would no longer be affected by this life treating disease.

Unfortunately, when early scholars located the origin of the sickle cell hemoglobin in West Africa it served to mark blood as a locus for racial difference. The popular misconception is that sickling is confined to peoples of African origin despite the fact that the sickle cell gene is not confined to people of African descent. It is accurate to report that there is a high frequency of the gene in Equatorial Africa and that from West Africa the gene was carried primarily via enslaved Africans to both North and South America, the Caribbean, and Europe.

In many West African populations HbS and HbC are present within the same population; thus, scholars reason that there is indeed a direct relationship between the two. Some scholars argue that HbC is a more recent mutation and therefore has a more limited spread than HbS (McElroy, 28). Other scholars suggest that perhaps HbS may have resulted from a mutation from HbC. It’s possible that HbC was established in West Africa and is being gradually replaced by HbS (Johnson, 25). Although scholars debate the relational nature of HbS and HbC, all agree that in populations with high frequencies of HbC, frequencies of HbS are low and the reverse is also true which gives the impression that relationally HbS and HbC must be mutually exclusive (Johnson, 25).

rted, was located in the black persons of Equatorial Africa and descendants of West Africans throughout the world. Sickle cell-hemoglobin C or HbC, is most common in West Africa and is generally found in people of West African origin. HbC is distributed in West African and reaches up to 20 percent in Northern Ghana and the adjacent Upper Volta region (McElroy, 28). HbC persons seldom suffer from serious disease. People who have inherited only one HbS gene also do not suffer from sickle-cell disease because the majority of their “hemoglobin is normal” which “prevents the abnormal hemoglobin (HbS) from forming fibers distorting blood cells”(Molnar, 143). People with the SS hemoglobin (individuals who inherited the HbS gene from both parents) may however develop sickle-cell disease. There is a wid

Some topics in this essay:
Dr Herrick, West Africa, Individuals SS, HbS HbC, America Caribbean, West African, People SS, People HbS, Nigeria Ghana, HbS Malaria, sickle cell, hbs gene, west africa, sickle-cell disease, african origin, cell trait, west african, sickle cell trait, inherited hbs, northern europe, hbs hbc, west african origin, sickle cell gene, inherited hbs gene, europe north america,

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Approximate Word count = 1830
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)


  

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