The Human Genome Diversity Project
  Good for If Not Good as Anthropology?

By Jonathan Marks (Yale University)

    In the wake of the success achieved by
  medical geneticists in generating interest
  and support for the Human Genome Pro-
  ject, population geneticists have begun to
  rouse interest in an offshoot project of con-
  siderable significance to anthropology.
    The original Human Genome Project, as
  it happens, was rooted in an archaic, Platon-
  ic view of our species -- one by which a sin-
  glc DNA sequence can be represented as
  human normality and against which disease
  alleles can be contrasted.  This has long
  been known to be a misleading approach to
  human genetics-for what blood group can
  be considered normal, when normal
  humans can have A, B and O? What genes
  for noses are normal, when humans may
  have broad or narrow, long or flat, straight
  or curved, pointed or bulbous ones?
    The Human Genome Diversity Project
  (HGDP), by contrast, seeks to understand
  the genetic variation of the human species
  by sampling the DNA of human popula-
  tions, preserving their cell lines and allow-
  ing future generations of geneticists to
  study them.  Genetically trained anthropolo-
  gists have been retrieving blood samples
  from the field for generations, of course
  (since Carleton Coon first drew blood from
  the Rif in Morocco in the 1920s), but there
  has never been a large-scale, publicly visi-
  ble, highly funded "Project" permitting
  them -- indeed bidding them -- to do so.
    With an extraordinary publicity machine
  behind it (4 write-ups in Science to date, for
  example), the Project geared up to load its
  syringes with the blood of their targets, the
  exotic peoples of the world.  But it ran into
  problems almost immediately.  The HGDP,
  as it turned out, had been conceived,
  designed and organized by molecular popu-
  lation geneticists with largely a folk knowl-
  edge of anthropology.  It was the equivalent
  of teenagers trying to build a cyclotron in
  their backyard.
    The goal of establishing a repository of
  aboriginal human genetic samples sounds
  reasonable enough.  What rational objec-
  tions could anyone have?

Persons or Specimens?

    The initial major challenge was posed by
  spokesmen and activists on behalf of cer-
  tain aboriginal populations.  The proposals
  for the HGDP indeed articulated a concern
  for the indigenes (Genomics 1 1:490-49 1),
  but representatives were neither invited to
  the initial planning sessions or consulted.
  This struck observers as possibly indicative
  of a lack of sincere interest in the communi-
  ties donating blood, as if they were fruit-
  flies or nematode worms-specimens,
  rather than persons.
    The alternative would be to purchase
  blood samples from the organisms them-
  selves.  But somewhat more savvy than in
  the days when Peter Minuit could cop Man-
  hattan Island for just $24, the organisms
  perceived a classically exploitative colonial
  relationship behind the Project.  One of the
  HGDP's frustrated geneticists was recently
  quoted by Discover magazine: "We're sci-
  entists, not politicians" (Nov 1994.75) -- as
  if opening the veins of the indigenous peo-
  ples of the world might not constitute a sig-
  nificantly political act.
    Straddling the boundary between the sci-
  ences and humanities, anthropology is self-
  consciously responsible to both intellectual
  traditions and to its objects of study.  How-
  ever intellectually schismatic the field of
  anthropology is today, the HGDP presents
  ideological concerns to all contemporary
  practitioners.  Can the HGDP afford to
  undertake colonial science in a postcolonial
  world?  Can anthropology afford to be rep-
  resented by the HGDP if it does?  If not,
  how can the Project be decolonialized?  Can
  the objects of this study be de-objectified?

  Genetic Purity

    Other methodological and basic scientific
  issues have been raised.  For example, as
  Science dutifully reported: Led by the
  Khoisan, "What these populations have in
  common is that each has been isolated and
  has only rarely -- if ever -- intermixed with
  its neighbors" (252-.11614).  This was a faith-
  ful representation of the proposal, which
  called for targeting populations "that have
  been isolated for some time, are likely to be
  linguistically and culturally distinct."
     But genetic isolation is a dubious
  assumption in anthropology.  This very
  point, interestingly, had been criticized by
  anthropologists nearly half a century earli-
  er. Clyde Kluckhohn could readily docu-
  ment extensive intermarriage between the
  Ramah Navajo and other groups ethnohis-
  torically, but geneticists insisted the group
  was genetically pure (Cold Spring Harb
  Sympos Quant Biol 15:401-408).
     The insistence on false genetic purity is a
  corollary of the Project's stated primary
  goal: To discern the ultimate microphyloge-
  ny of human populations before population
  contact, which they take to have begun with
  Columbus,  The HGDP has a greater interest
  in piecing together the genetic structure of
  the world as they imagine it to have been in
  the 1490s, rather than as it is in the 1990s.
     A number of well-known epistemologi-
  cal problems, however, loom large before
  this goal – even for scientists interested in
  studying the human population as it is in
  the 1990s.  It is unclear which genetic data
  or clustering algorithms are most appropri-
  are for the task: the same dataset can often
  yield very different trees.  Further, the
  branching sequence of the tree reflects
  other population variables than simply
  recency of common ancestry-it reflects as
  well patterns of gene flow and population
  structure. The pretense of genetic purity is a
  way of simply defining one confounding
  variable -- gene flow -- out of existence.
     But of course, one doesn't require genet-
  ics at all to decide that the Danes are more
  closely related to the Dutch than to the Iro-
  quois.  And the finer details of human bio-
  history are far more difficult to discern
  when people are being sampled according
  to culturally constructed designations.  Are
  the Thais, for example, more closely related
  to the Cambodians or to the Laotians?
  Given that the forces that shaped the gene
  pool of Southeast Asia are far older and
  more fluid than the sociopolitical boun-
  aries that presently exist, there may be no
  biological answer to such a biological
  sounding question. it may in fact have no
  more of a biological answer than does the
  question of whether the genes of anthropol-
  ogists cluster with those of a sample of
  lawyers or accountants.

  Politics of Bodily Fluids

     After the first call to action, the HGDP
  enlisted some anthropologists to promote
  their cause, and set out to deemphasize
  microphylogeny as the Project's goal (Evol
  Anth 1:80-82).  The new stated goals include
  the study of disease and adaptation.
     The problem here is quite simple: The
  HGDP does not have any plans to collect
  phenotypes or life-history data to accompa-
  ny the genetic material they plan to ware-
  house.  Without a knowledge of what dis-
  case the occupants of a particular Petri dish
  actually contracted, it seems unlikely that
  disease could be effectively studied by the
  HGDP.  Indeed, when the genetics of nasal
  form or height is actually approachable, a
  whole new Project will have to be undertaken
  -- for there will be no phenotypes for
  posterity to associate with the cells this Pro-
  ject will have collected.
     Further, an issue that has not been much
  discussed is informed consent.  What consti-
  rules "informed consent" to those who do
  not share our views of heredity, of the
  workings of the body and of the nature of
  blood?  Carleton Coon wrote in 1954 that
  "[b]lood-letting for blood-group analysis
  falls into the class of blood-letting in gener-
  al, and evokes the whole ideology of blood-
  brotherhood. the fear of injury by conta-
  gious magic, and that of ritual condemna-
  tion based on the analogy of menstruation"
  (The Story of Man: 186).  Coon, not remem-
  bered as being among the most "politically
  correct" anthropologists of his generation,
  knew that it was no straightforward affair to
  coax people out of their bodily fluids.  And
  that was when the difference between con-
  sent and coercion was blurry, and when it
  didn't really matter whether the participants
  in a scientific project understood what was
  going on.
     Given the daily difficulties of conveying
  our scientific ideas to elite first-world stu-
  dents, to take informed consent seriously
  the HGDP will presumably require exten-
  sive input from students of the "anthropolo-
  gy of the body." They do not seem to have
  given it much. thought up to this point.
      The consequences of failing to address
  these issues could conceivably be a "repa-
  triation" scenario a few years hence, in
  which laboratories might be asked to return
  their cell repositories to aboriginal peoples
  following the model presently threatening
  to decimate osteological collections in
  American museums.  And in blood cell
  lines, the ties to life and ancestry can be far
  stronger than the (often nebulous, but still
  binding) claims laid on skeletal collections.
     And probably most important, for people
  whose lifeways and whose very existence
  are jeopardized by insensitive exploitation,
  the preservation of their cells bespeaks an
  almost cynical hereditarianism.  The geneti-
  cists seemed to expect to look people in the
  eye and tell them that their DNA means
  more than their customs, their land, their
  traditions and their lives.  And then they
  professed surprise when those people failed
  to share those priorities.

  Molecular Band-Aid for the Field

     One of the strongest arguments in sup-
  port of the HGDP is that it could represent a
  pot of "free money" for anthropologists.  On
  the other hand, so might the Pioneer Fund.
  The relevant question is whether in estab-
  lishing the HGDP, the field will be
  advanced or intellectually degraded;
  whether it will be used to support scientific
  research programs of the 19th century or of
  the 21st century.
      A Human Genome Diversity Project --
  the establishment of a gene research muse-
  um -- could be a signally important resource
  for the study of our species at the genetic
  level, and it is not my intention necessarily
  to stop it, not even to slow it down. but
  simply to ensure that it reflects well upon
  the knowledge and concerns of the contem-
  porary discipline of anthropology.  If it does
  not, then it will represent a major triumph
  for anti-intellectualism and pseudo-science.
     An especially noteworthy appeal was
  recently made in an article in the American
  Anthropologist (96:4) where John Moore
  attempted to drum up interest in the HGDP
  with the clarion call that it "ha[s] the poten-
  tial to bring the fields of anthropology back
  together again, just as Boas might have
  wanted" (p 941), This seems, however, to
  get it a bit backwards.  Boas was exceeding-
  ly skeptical of anthropological issues being
  addressed through interpretations of genetic
  data, as indeed was Earnest Hooton.  For
  Boas, geneticists did not discriminate
  between knowledge and pseudo-knowl-
  edge, and applied both recklessly to issues
  of human welfare-as in the eugenic solu-
  tion to social problems by involuntary ster-
  ilization and restricting immigration, out of
  concerns for "germ plasm." For Hooton,
  who supported eugenics, the geneticists still
  made asinine pronouncements, such as
  declaring that Poles and Chinese were
  members of the same race because they bad
  the same ABO blood group frequencies.

  Anthropology Before Genetics

     Interestingly, shortly after Moore's arti-
  cle invoking Boas was published, Time
  magazine published an article featuring the
  HGDP and its leading spokesman, geneti-
  cist Luca Cavalli-Sforza (Jan 16, 1995:54-
  55).  Time reported in passing that "All
  Europeans are thought to be a hybrid popu-
  latiort, with 65% Asian and 35% African
  genes.
    For those who care to view scientific
  statements as texts, there's one for the
  books.  It is not even false; it is simply
  ridiculous as articulated -- as if Asians and
  Africans were opposites, homogeneous and
  pure, and Europeans were less so.  It repre-
  sents classic folk anthropology and pseudo-
  biohistory.  Such public pronouncements do
  not provide a compelling basis for under-
  taking the HGDP, as it is presently consti-
  tuted.
    it seems to me that the best way to con-
  ceive of the Human Genome Diversity Pro-
  ject is to appreciate that it will require four
  fields of anthropological knowledge before
  it even gets off the ground.
    Remember, it started with none.
    This endeavor has gradually grown to
  include part of one, (molecular) physical
  anthropology.  But the HGDP needs to
  reformulate itself at the most basic levels
  before it has the potential to be much more
  than an international scientific embarrass-
  ment as an anthropology project.  Hopefully
  its representatives within the anthropology
  community will take note.

    [Marks is associate professor of anthro-
  pology at Yale University, and is the author
  of Human Biodiversity: Genes, Race and
  History (Aldine de Gruyter, 1995).]