THE SMART AND THE DEAD

There's good news and bad news for God's chosen people. The good news is that Jews of Eastern European origin -- Ashkenazi Jews -- have genes that make us smarter. The bad news is that those genes are killing us.

Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending at the University of Utah did the study. They found that Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average IQ of any ethnic group. We make up about 3% of the US population but win 27% of the US Nobel science prizes. Twenty percent of this country's chief executives and 22% of Ivy League students are Ashkenazi Jews. So are more than half of the world's chess champions.

The theory is that over the centuries only the smartest Jews survived persecution, and passed down their genes.

But these same genes are killing us. They carry inherited diseases like Tay-Sachs, Canavan disease, Niemann-Pick disease Type A, Gaucher disease, idiopathic torsion dystonia, non-classical adrenal hyperplasia, factor XI deficiency, sphingolipid storage diseases, glycogen storage diseases, clotting disorders, disorders of adrenal steroid biosynthesis, and disorders of DNA repair, mucolipidosis type IV, Fanconi’s anemia type C, Bloom syndrome, familial dysautonomia and others.

These diseases are all deadly. But they also promote the growth of nerve pathways. One copy of the genes causing these diseases can make you smarter. But two copies can make you dead.

I see this as just another practical joke God has played on His chosen people. What doesn't kill us makes us smarter.