Talk:Medical genetics of Jews

Merge material
The material below needs to be merged and condensed into a new history section. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:37, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

As a highly endogamous group, with highly distinct cultural practices, illness among Jews often differs from that among non-Jews in its frequency and impact. Historical sources state that certain diseases and illnesses were more frequent among Jews than among the general population, at least prior to the late 20th century. It was argued that institutional endogamy was been a major contributor to these statistics, as well as behaviour due to Jewish cultural norms. On the other hand, greater immunity, and lower morbidity, is shown for a few illnesses. In modern medicine, the medical genetics of Jews have been intensively studied.

Infectious disease
A number of infectious diseases were thought to be rarer among Jewish populations in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1505, in Europe, there was an epidemic of typhoid fever, but Jews were unaffected by it ; 19th century Typhoid epidemics also show a higher level of resistance among Jews, which though not quite as remarkable, in some cases produced a morbidity that was half that of non-Jews.

Tuberculosis, historically, was rare among the Jews, and even for those who did catch it, mortality was less frequent. Explanations of this tend to suggest a connection to Jewish behaviour, such as careful inspection of meat, or the cleaning of surfaces with a damp cloth instead of a dusting brush (a brush would lifts more dust into the air) , rather than genetic factors.

As for pneumonia, the morbidity among Jews was drastically lower than among non-Jews ; in 19th century Verona, Italy, for example, non-Jews suffering from the disease were 5 times more likely to die. One explanation which has been offered is that Jews tend to have jobs which require them to stay indoors, meaning that they are not exposed as much to inclement weather.

In the 19th century, childhood disease, such as diptheria and measles, proved to be less fatal to Jewish children than to non-Jews, except in Amsterdam, where they were three times more dangerous. Scarlet fever appears to have affected Jews more or less the same as the rest of the population. Curiously though, Jewish children suffered less from diarrhea-causing diseases, than their non-Jewish peers, even if they were living in the worst excesses of Victorian squalor ; in Budapest, Jewish children were three times less likely to die from diarrhea-causing disease, than non-Jewish children, and similar resistance to such disease was seen among Jewish children in other cities.

Syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease which is now quite rare, but was somewhat more common in the 19th century, was then quite rare among Jews. For example, in one hospital in a Jewish area of 19th century London, there were 15 times as many cases of syphilis in non-Jews than in Jews, despite nearly a quarter of the hospital's patients being Jewish. In America the discrepancy was even more extreme, with less than 1% of the patients in a Jewish hospital having syphilis, despite nearly 12% of the general American population having the disease.

Gastro-intestinal illness
Indigestion and hyperchlorhydria were very common among Jews, and nearly half of all victorian Jews suffering from cancer were likely to be suffering from gastrointestinal cancer, despite this being the case for only a quarter of non-Jews.

In the 19th century, medical professionals put this down to poor eating habits, such as workaholic behaviour, and habitually eating food on a Shabbat which had been kept warm in an oven for the previous 12–24 hours (due to the traditional obligation to avoid cooking during the Shabbat). In 19th century Italy, Jews were more likely to die from gastro-intestinal illness, than non-Jews were; it has been suggested that this might be connected to the popularity, among Jews living there, of eating fatty foods, despite the warm climate. However, it is now known that genetic factors are responsible for many of these issues (indigestion not being one of them).

Disease of the circulatory system
Among 19th century Americans, Jews were twice as likely as non-Jews to die from circulatory disease ; chronic rheumatism was frequent among Jews, and they were much more likely than non-Jews to die from it. Intermittent claudication, due to severe atherosclerosis, is more frequent in Jews than in non-Jews, especially in 19th century Russia. Fatal strokes were twice as common among 19th century Italian Jews, than among non-Jews in Italy during the same period ; the reverse appears to have been the case in 19th century Russia and Poland.

Especially common among Jews are varicose veins. A symptom of this is to have haemorrhoids, which are more common among Jews than any other ethnic group. In fact, in 19th century eastern Europe, the Jew with haemorrhoids was a proverbial saying, and it was considered highly unusual for a Hasidic Jew, in Galicia or Poland, to not have haemorrhoids. Although it is rare for young people in general to suffer haemorrhoids, it is somewhat frequent for young Jews to be treated for the condition ; 19th century doctors considered it rare for a Jew to pass middle age without suffering from the problem. The Jewish community of Eastern Europe argued that the prevalence of haemorrhoids, among Jews, stemmed from the Jewish habit of spending most of the day sitting on hard benches, while studying the Talmud.

Haemophilia is also more frequent among Jews than among non-Jews; this may have been the case in the classical era, as the Talmud argues that a boy must not be circumcised, if he has two brothers (from the same mother) who have died as a result of being circumcised.

Mental and nervous disease
In the early 20th century it was thought that Jews suffered more from functional nervous disease, than degenerative nervous disease ; the most serious degenerative diseases of the brain and spinal cord, etc., are far more frequent among non-Jews than among Jews. It is thought this is connected to the rarity of alcoholism and syphilis among Jews.

In the 19th century, Neurasthenia, a condition no longer recognised in Western medicine (although it may somewhat correspond to dysautonomia), was frequently attributed to Jews ; in New York, 40% of people diagnosed with Neurasthenia were Jewish. Hysteria was very frequent among 19th century Jews, particularly in Warsaw ; unlike most ethnic groups, where there is a large gender imbalance in the frequency of hysteria, it was quite common among male Jews. In general, Neurasthenia was most frequently diagnosed among bankers, and financial traders, which were popular occupations for Jews. It was suggested that the prevalence of hysteria among Jews was due to the anti-semitic persecution, to which Jewish communities had historically been subjected.

Water on the brain seems to be less fatally frequent among Jews than among non-Jews; in 19th century Hungary young children were 3 times more likely to die from it if they were not Jewish. Locomotor ataxia, a major disease in the 19th century, was four times more frequent among non-Jews than among Jews ; this may be due to the rarity of syphilis among Jews, since locomotor ataxia is often a symptom of advanced syphilis. However, Parkinson's disease was particularly frequent among Jews in the 19th century ; in Austro-Hungary 32% of victims of the disease were Jewish, despite Jews being a mere 4% of the population.

In 19th century England and Wales, there were 60% more hospital admissions, among Jews, for general paralysis, than among non-Jews. By contrast, in 19th century Russia, there were six times less hospital admissions for the illness, among Jews, than among non-Jews. It was suggested that the Russian figures might be due to the fact that 65% of the people, admitted there for this illness, had previously suffered syphilis, which was a comparatively rare disease among Russian Jews. As for the figures in England and Wales, it was suggested that the statistic might be related to the tendency of Jews, in that period and location, to choose a particular type of occupation - merchant, stockbroker, etc..

Mental illness
Statistics from the early 20th century suggested that mental illness was proportionately more common among people of Jewish ancestry than among the wider population ; and relapse was twice as frequently observed among Jews, than among non-Jews. Statistics suggest that in the 19th century, an ethnic Jew was 4 to 6 times more liable to suffer mental illness than a non-Jew. In 19th century London, it was approximately three times more common for Jewish women to become insane after giving birth, than it was for non-Jews. Also, the average age (37) for a Jew to become insane was earlier, in a statistically significant way, than the average age (43) for the onset of insanity in non-Jews.

The victorians observed that Jews were more susceptible to acute psychosis, of the kinds that afflict younger people, than were non-Jews. On the other hand, among Jews it was more likely for insanity to take the form of melancholia than that of mania, and antisocial personality disorder was comparatively rare. Nevertheless, alcohol-induced insanity was comparatively rare among Jews, in the 19th century; in New York, for example, only 5% of the Jewish inmates in the insane asylum had alcoholism, a statistic repeated elsewhere in the world.

Eye diseases
In the early 20th century, it was thought that, of the diseases of the eye, that Jewish people suffer more than others from
 * trachoma
 * follicular conjunctivitis
 * glaucoma
 * retinitis pigmentosa . This disease, which eventually leads to total blindness, is hereditary, thus its greater frequency among Jews has been attributed to endogamy.
 * cancer of the tear duct . This is attributed to an anatomical feature somewhat peculiar to ethnic Jews - a narrow nasal canal
 * blepharitis

These diseases (apart from blepharitis, which just makes the eyelashes fall out, and sometimes causes an unsightly distortion in the eyelid), if uncorrected, can lead to blindness. Hence blindness was more common among Jews than among most non-Jews. The Jews of America, and of its ex-patriots (and their descendants), are an exception to this, as historically stringent immigration laws prevented blind people from entering the country.


 * Or perhaps not. It is based on a source of over 100 years old that relies only on the most rudimentary epidemiological priciples and predates the development of modern genetics and microbiology. Very quaint but uninformative. JFW | T@lk  22:57, 25 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Might be useful as a source for a sentence saying "In the 19th century, people believed.." but at the moment my priorities lie with the 2009 flu pandemic, so this won't be done any time soon. Tim Vickers (talk) 03:30, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Unreferenced Comment?
"Geneticists are intrinsically interested in Jewish populations as a disproportionate percentage of genetics researchers are Jewish"

Sounds a bit suspect to me, does anyone have any actual figures for this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.21.229.182 (talk) 22:50, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Myopia
I've seen a research paper on PubMed noting a genetic basis for the above-average prevalence of myopia in the Ashkenazi population. EIN (talk) 09:41, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

I've deleted the following as it's based on wrong understanding of vagely written article [46].

"The DNST3 gene makes Ashkenazi Jews 40% more likely to develop schizophrenia and similar diseases. The first portion of the study included the largest-ever sample group of Ashkenazi Jews ever researched. Of the 2,500 Ashkenazi Jews from Israel who contributed DNA samples for the study, 1,500 were healthy, while 1,000 were affected by mental disorders related to schizophrenia"

Actually there is no evidence that the rate of schizophrenia among the Ashkenazim differs from that in other populations (as stated in [47]). The reason reseachers have focused on this population is for reducing genetic heterogeneity among subjects and thus increasing the detectable effects of any particular locus.

Study cited in [46] was actually done on 906 cases of schizophrenia and 1620 healthy controls and its only goal was establishing correlation between known variation of specific gen and chances to develop schizophrenia (which was much stronger between Ashkenazi due to reduced genetic heterogeneity). Any comparison about rate of schizophrenia between different population were completely out of scope of this study (see http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/131119/ncomms3739/full/ncomms3739.html#results) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arusinov (talk • contribs) 13:42, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Medical genetics of Jews. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added tag to http://www.jewishgeneticscenter.org/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20131020004618/http://hugr.huji.ac.il/AshkenaziJews.aspx to http://hugr.huji.ac.il/AshkenaziJews.aspx

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 12:27, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 4 external links on Medical genetics of Jews. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070517013236/http://www.gaucherdisease.org/prevalence.php to http://www.gaucherdisease.org/prevalence.php
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.jewishgeneticscenter.org/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20040226021451/http://www.geneticstesting.com/patient_info/jewish_diseases.htm to http://www.geneticstesting.com/patient_info/jewish_diseases.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100305085828/http://www.uscj.org/Koach/kocmar05gross1.htm to http://www.uscj.org/Koach/kocmar05gross1.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 08:31, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Source Verification
All the sources to this article are compiled from self-reporting data. Willing to turn over headers of emails sent to all sources cited by this article where-in the verification method imposed to determine study subjects were both Jewish and Ashkenazi was requested. No authors were able to provide the method in which they used to determine the authenticity of subject's Jewishness or Ashkenazi background. Contact with the Jewish Federations of North America, formerly the United Jewish Appear which was created through article of law in the USA to determine an individual's Jewishness for immigration into the USA, yielded similar results as no subject or study was verified by them to certify subjects were either Jewish or Ashkenazi. Contact with the Jewish Agency for Israel which was organized by the League of Nations for the same purpose - determining Jewishness of individuals - yielded the same result, no studies or subjects included in a study were verified as Jewish for the purposes of the study.

Can the authors provide a source for the citation's verification methodology or is this article pseudo-science? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Trustmeiamright (talk • contribs) 22:49, 2 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Received letter from US Department of Education Civil Rights Office, this field of research is not officially accredited by the US Department of Education, as such the case of the Jewish people of America v. US Department of Education was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds - ie the field of study is not approved, regulated, or administered by the US Department of Education and thus non-accredited. This happens all the time local college here has a Dungeons & Dragons class, but just having a college class and research on trolls in D&D doesn't make D&D reality. I always have issues uploading photos, any suggestions on how to add the letter? Maybe I can publish as a PDF somewhere then cite that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Trustmeiamright (talk • contribs) 12:48, 6 June 2021 (UTC)

Completed edit of article to reflect the speculative and antisemitic nature of the content. I still advise removing the article all together since it is highly offensive and not at all grounded in fact. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Trustmeiamright (talk • contribs) 21:27, 27 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Added a new section on this article's controversy and Nazism. Also reporting article for Self-reported data as no verification methodology of Jew identity in the studies has been presented after being requested now several times. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Trustmeiamright (talk • contribs) 16:21, 20 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, I've had to remove all of that. It's not okay for Wikipedia editors to do WP:Original research, especially the sort of original research that contacts other people and adds up sources to create a new idea that contradicts Published sources.  If you want to write in this article that Dor Yeshorim, founded by Rabbi Josef Ekstein, is not a Jewish organization, then you need to find a published, reliable source that says this – and not just any source, but one (or several) strong enough to overcome all of the other sources that describe it as being a Jewish organization.  This same requirement applies to everything you wrote, from claiming that medical genetics is Nazism, being incorporated into the "national curriculum" of an unspecified nation, claiming that dictionaries say it's Nazism to measure the prevalence of genetic disorders (hint:  they don't; knowing the prevalence of Tay–Sachs or trying to prevent it is not the same thing as "racial superiority"), or that most Jewish people object to medical genetics, especially the sort of medical genetics that helps them have healthy children and healthy grandchildren.  Those may be your personal opinions, but if you want to put this in Wikipedia, you need to find very strong, preferably scholarly, reliable sources that say the same things, and enough of them to prove that this view is the mainstream position. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:51, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
 * An example that may help you understand the rules: If a reliable source says that the people in a given clinical trial were Jewish, then Wikipedia accepts that those people are Jewish, unless and until some other (equal or better) reliable source says that they're not.  We don't require the source to prove that someone is Jewish (proven how?  according to which definition?); we trust the reliable sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:32, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

I understand that you are not Jewish and so you might not be familiar with the Holocaust. The family of Josef Ekstein migrated to the USA in 5704/1944 some sixe full years after the Hungarian government restricted travel on the Jewish community in 5698/1938 preventing them from leaving and a full four years after they had signed into a formal alliance with Adolf Hitler in 5700/1940. This is why the Israelis rejected his family forcing them to leave for Argentina, which is a country known for providing protections to former Nazis, where they migrated to the USA several years later. Furthermore the UJA or United Jewish Appeal which was established in 5699/1939 in order to verify the Jewishness of refugees fleeing Europe and administer the Jewish community in the USA has no record of his family nor do they recognize the organization Dor Yeshroim and in fact the organization was citied by the Anti-Defamation League in relation to James Watson who was stripped of his Nobel Prize for this sort of research. That was cited.

As for national curriculum that was mentioned in two place one in relation to the Nazi national curriculum whih was cited from the Holocaust Museum and a second time in relation to the USA wherein if you review the talk above as well as my dispute claim you'll see I agreed to provide a photo copy of a a letter from the US Office of Civil Rights if I could get help uploading it. I was having trouble due to redacting Hayden B. Siegel's personal email from the document so that he would not be harassed; he agreed to allow me to cite his name but not his contact information and I want to respect his privacy. I can still furnish the document if someone can assist me in getting it uploaded with the email redacted from the letter?

The dictionaries all stated "extreme racist or authoritarian views or behavior" and racism is defined as "the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another" thus making this article an element of Nazism by definition. There is not an article on Wikipedia that picks over the genetics of non-Jewish groups like Atheist or Christians, but rather instead there are several here which do pick over the genetics of the same minorities the Nazis did and moreover do so without establishing within their citation and proof which certifies that those involved in the study are actually Jewish. Finally prior to supplying the definition I cited the Berlin Agreement and Potsdam Conference which verbatim referred to the ideologies exhibited in this article as Nazism by the letter.

If that was not enough then I advise you to review the Genetic Information Nondisclosure Act which makes articles like this illegal:

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ebsa/laws-and-regulations/laws/gina

You may also want to review the Ethical, Legal and Social Implications Research Program which also identified what this article puts forward as bias, non-scientific, bigotry:

https://www.genome.gov/Funded-Programs-Projects/ELSI-Research-Program-ethical-legal-social-implications

While knowing the prevalence of genetic disorders may not be Nazism arbitrarily assuming the prevalence of it in a community it. There was no methodology provided as to how test subjects were determined to be Jewish and so these figures were assumed not scientifically established as fact. Moreover many of the studies attempted to target the Jewish community and other minorities directly in order to present data. This is known as Confirmation Bias - "the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values" in science. For the studies to be non-bias they would need to be blind or generally test rather than seek out and cherry pick candidates who would confirm their findings. More than one of the citations in this article actually refers to that in their findings and was actually an article disproving what this article assumes, but whoever wrote this obviously didn't really read any of these articles and merely posted citations based on headlines rather than content.

Testing for Tay-Sachs and other genetic disorders is vital for maintaining public health, but attributing these disorders to minorities such as Jews is Nazism. If the article was to remove the Jewish connotation then it would be perfectly acceptable but at current it is antisemitic propaganda being maintained by non-Jews. I mean you no offense but you logged your edits in the middle of the Jewish Sabbath. The 24th of July at 17:51 and 19:32 UTC would be Shabbat in the USA which this article is localized to; but it was also still Shabbat in Israel as well as far as Japan too.

Now I understand you do not believe the Holocaust occurred or don't accept it as factual. You admitted that in your reply, "Those may be your personal opinions, but if you want to put this in Wikipedia, you need to find very strong, preferably scholarly, reliable sources that say the same things" ignoring the fact that my citations came from .gov sites maintained by the USA as well as links from the National Holocaust Memorial Museum, Anti-Defamation League, and other sources internationally recognized as experts in what is considered Nazism including an international treaty from a .gov site which verbatim cited your opinions based on unverified data as Nazism.

So, I will ask a 4th time: What proof do you have that subjects in the studies presented in the article were members of the Jewish community or are you making assumptions without proof? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Trustmeiamright (talk • contribs) 12:11, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * please remember to sign your talk page posts. I recently reverted your edit. I thank you for bringing your justification here to the talk page, but we do not generally operate by posting and then re-adding disputed content without giving others a change to read and respond. I don't believe that WhatamIdoing or I need to prove to you that reliable sources have done their research well. If you feel the cited sources are unreliable, you may want to bring the topic up at WP:RSN for review by experienced editors. I think it is likely most will agree that they are reliable. Separately, I believe your points about HIPAA and PHI are WP:Original research. You should seek out reliable sources that make that analysis (which I believe to be incorrect). Firefangledfeathers (talk) 19:17, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
 * It sounds like just wants us to trust them because they're right. Fortunately Wikipedia doesn't operate that way or it'd be a very different website. –– FormalDude   talk   (please notify me  on reply)  02:59, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Actually, Wikipedia does operate that way. Trustmeiamwikipedia (talk) 03:04, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Well your username is a blue link so it must be true! /s –– FormalDude  talk   (please notify me  on reply)  03:06, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Hey! No silly banter without me! ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants   Tell me all about it.  12:33, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
 * > There is not an article on Wikipedia that picks over the genetics of non-Jewish groups
 * You should read Finnish heritage disease.
 * There are also multiple individual articles that affect people from only one ethnic group, such as Swedish mutation (a cause of early-onset Alzheimer's). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:48, 29 July 2021 (UTC)


 * Note that I've blocked as a suspected sock of .--  Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots 22:21, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Ponyo, if this page's existence is going to be the equivalent of an attractive nuisance for a blocked editor, do you think it would be better to WP:SEMI it? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:49, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
 * It only takes 10 edits and a few days to get past autoconfirmed and there hasn't really been the level of disruption required to semi a talk page. That being said, if you see an account pop up espousing similar views, you can always drop a note on my talk page and it can be shut down before it descends into...↑this↑.-- Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots 23:29, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
 * I'll keep this page on my watchlist and keep an eye out for suspicious activity. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants   Tell me all about it.  02:33, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Particularly offensive and outright wrong statement RE: inbreeding
The introduction states that the cause for the genetic conditions being prevalent among Ashkenazi Jews is because of inbreeding. I know this to be wrong because from a historical perspective, blaming genetic conditions on inbreeding is quite incredulous and has been proven wrong with multiple conditions. I have Ashkenazi heritage from my motjer, but have a genetic skeletal dysplasia from my "white" father. This condition was once blamed on inbreeding, but the doctors who said this were proven wrong with the development of genetic medicine.

[https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/ashkenazi-jews-are-not-inbred Here is an article in Discover Magazine. "The higher diversity in the AJ population was paralleled by a lower inbreeding coefficient, F, indicating the AJ population is more outbred than Europeans, not inbred, as has long been assumed"] 107.123.21.51 (talk) 01:07, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (late-onset form)
The article mentioneds Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (nonclassical form) related to Ashkenazi Jews, however, you linked to a general article about Congenital adrenal hyperplasia, not the specific article related to the nonclassical form, please consider linking to the specific article Late onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia which is a synonym for the nonclassical form of congenital adrenal hyperplasia; this article explicitly mentions Ashkenazi Jews related to related to 21-hydroxylase deficiency and it referes to a study specifically related to that population (PMID: 28541281). Maxim Masiutin (talk) 09:46, 9 March 2024 (UTC)