I (won’t) drink to that

Guanabee nicely skewers a poorly written Science Daily article.

According to a study, Mexican Americans are more likely to become heavy drinkers and have alcohol-related health problems because of a particular haplotype (cluster of genetic stuff), labeled “H6.” Wait, give us a second to adjust this Moonshine IV we’ve got hooked up. You’re sure they don’t drink more because people keep insisting “Mexican” and “Caucasian” are mutually exclusive categories?:

“Hispanic” is a political term only relevant to the United States, including fourth or fifth generation English-speakers with Spanish surnames, ethnic Chinese Argentines and the children of Afro-Cubans… and anybody whose relatives ever went anywhere south of the Rio Grande… as well as anyone from the Iberian peninsula — for all we know, the author of the study, University of Kansas Medical Center professor Yu-Jui Yvonne Wan may be “Hispanic”.

Or not. “Mexican-American” and “persons carrying certain gene-clusters that seem to be related to alcoholism” aren’t exactly the same, though probably as a whole, there are more Mexican Americans of the right genetic makeup to have this particular configuration. Another conclusion from the study — drunks are generally poorer than other people.

I don’t mean to make fun of Dr. Wan’s study. People with Native American ancestry are more likely to be susceptible to certain ailments (like diabetes), and the assumptions of treatment programs always have been culturally biased (the grand-daddy of them all, the 1938 “Alcoholics Anonymous“, was clearly written to appeal to middle-class American values) — and may just mean that treatment programs should look more at various immigrant groups.

Being “Mexican-American” or “Hispanic” in itself hardly makes one an alkie —

— but the way the story is reported (and probably will be reported in the popular press) is enough to make those of us susceptible to the “Irish virus” reach for a Bushmills.