Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes, in his book The Seven Daughters of Eve postulates that all europeans alive today are the progeny of seven females alive at various times in during the last ice age. In other research, using the same mitochondrial DNA sampling techniques as Sykes used, anthropologists have shown that all existing homo sapiens are the direct decendantsa of a very small group that spread out of Africa some 100 - 200 thousand years ago. In terms of evolution, 200K years is simply a blink and without some other evolutuionary pressure, such as isolation, simply not enough time to generate sub-species. This is important because it not only destroys the biological concept of race as being anything other than superficial appearance (we're talking biology here not culture) but it also points the way to one of humankind's greatest weaknesses, a weakness made evident by the great plagues of history and brought to mind today by the conern over SARS.

Environmentalists raise concerns about companies like Monsanto for good reasons. Because of its dominance in breeding plants food crops are becoming monocultured. That is, the number of genetic variations in any giiven species of plant are becoming less and less. This can create a large problem for any animals that rely on those species for food if a diease comes along for which that plant variation has no resistance. As an example, in pre-columbian america the natives had at least several hundred species of maize, species that evolved over many millenia of both culrtivation and geographic isolation. Today in North America there are only a handful of different corns grown and they are at risk from a biological invader. In nature genetic diversity in a species is a hedge against disease running rampant through the species and potentially destroying it.

Of all the animals on the face of the earth the human species has the least genetic diversity in it due to the small number of Homo sapiens that survived climatic change in Africa and were able to migrate out and also survive the last ice age. Our closest relatives the bonobo great apes and the chimpanzees have about twice the genetic diversity that humans do and fruit flies have 10 times as much. In humans only about one genetic marker in a thousand is different from person to person. As a species we are very much more at risk for mass extinction through disease than almost any other species. Something to think about if you hear talking heads pooh poohing the risks of diseases like SARSb (which currently has a mortality rate of approximately 5%).