dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaCoronary heart disease, chronic inflammation, and pathogenic social hierarchy: a biological limit to possible reductions in morbidity and mortality
| Authors | Rodrick Wallace, Deborah Wallace, Robert G. Wallace |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | q-bio/0311034 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0311034 |
Abstract
We suggest that a particular form of social hierarchy, which we characterize as 'pathogenic', can, from the earliest stages of life, exert a formal analog to evolutionary selection pressure, literally writing a permanent developmental image of itself upon immune function as chronic vascular inflammation and its consequences. The staged nature of resulting disease emerges 'naturally' as a rough analog to punctuated equilibrium in evolutionary theory, although selection pressure is a passive filter rather than an active agent like structured psychosocial stress. Exposure differs according to the social constructs of race, class, and ethnicity, accounting in large measure for observed population-level differences in rates of coronary heart disease across industrialized societies. American Apartheid, which enmeshes both majority and minority communities in a social construct of pathogenic hierarchy, appears to present a severe biological limit to continuing declines in coronary heart disease for powerful as well as subordinate subgroups: 'Culture', to use the words of the evolutionary anthropologist Robert Boyd, 'is as much a part of human biology as the enamel on our teeth'.
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"abstract": "We suggest that a particular form of social hierarchy, which we characterize\nas \u0027pathogenic\u0027, can, from the earliest stages of life, exert a formal analog\nto evolutionary selection pressure, literally writing a permanent developmental\nimage of itself upon immune function as chronic vascular inflammation and its\nconsequences. The staged nature of resulting disease emerges \u0027naturally\u0027 as a\nrough analog to punctuated equilibrium in evolutionary theory, although\nselection pressure is a passive filter rather than an active agent like\nstructured psychosocial stress. Exposure differs according to the social\nconstructs of race, class, and ethnicity, accounting in large measure for\nobserved population-level differences in rates of coronary heart disease across\nindustrialized societies. American Apartheid, which enmeshes both majority and\nminority communities in a social construct of pathogenic hierarchy, appears to\npresent a severe biological limit to continuing declines in coronary heart\ndisease for powerful as well as subordinate subgroups: \u0027Culture\u0027, to use the\nwords of the evolutionary anthropologist Robert Boyd, \u0027is as much a part of\nhuman biology as the enamel on our teeth\u0027.",
"arxiv_id": "q-bio/0311034",
"authors": [
"Rodrick Wallace",
"Deborah Wallace",
"Robert G. Wallace"
],
"categories": [
"q-bio.NC",
"q-bio.TO"
],
"title": "Coronary heart disease, chronic inflammation, and pathogenic social hierarchy: a biological limit to possible reductions in morbidity and mortality",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0311034"
},
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