After listening to a 10-minute diatribe about the cruelty of genetics the other day, I decided to work up a little rebuttal.

The world has developed a sick fatalism when it comes to genetics, even going so far to have young women remove their breasts for fear of cancer.

When it comes to weight and disease, genes are of second-rate importance.

I blamed by genes for causing me to be overweight for years, but the evidence simply doesn't stack up.

Read up and spread the word: [www.raw-food-health.net]

Excellent points are provided in this site.

Genetic fatalism is the condition that maintains the status quo disease expectancies and epidemics, which are much higher than those of the closest related species eating biochemically compatible diets, unlike cultural diets of humans.

From 1980 through 2007, the crude percentage of the population with diagnosed diabetes increased 136%.
[www.cdc.gov]

Cancer incidence in non-human primates is very low. Epithelial neoplasms are responsible for more than 20% of human deaths but incidence in great apes is less than 2%. A major difference in cancer incidence between human and chimpanzees can derive from diet.
BMC Genomics. 2006; 7: 15.
Prostate. 1998;36:64–67.
An overview of the world literature on spontaneous tumors in nonhuman primates. J Med Primatol. 1989;18:423–437.
Am J Phys Anthropol. 1973;38:425–429.
Lab Anim Sci. 1973;23:533–539.

J Clin Oncol. 2009 Jun 1;27(16):2712-25..Despite ~565,650 US cancer deaths in 2008, it is mostly a preventable disease. Modification of diet alone by increasing vegetable and fruit intake may prevent 200,000 cancer deaths annually. Because of low toxicity & antioxidant properties, fruits, vegetables & other elements (phytochemicals and minerals) are being investigated.

Cancer Causes Control. 1997 Nov;8(6):872-82.
"a diet with greater diversity of meats, poultry, fish, and eggs, was associated with a 50% increase in risk among all men (95 percent confidence interval ..greater number of refined grain products also was associated with increased risk"

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010 Jan 26;107. Infections cause most mortality in wild chimps and humans with limited meds. But 'Lignan excretion is associated with dietary fiber and lower in fat; thus urinary lignans are healthy diet markers with biologically active chemopreventive properties.J Nutr. 2003 Mar;133
Nonhuman primates are remarkably resistant to cancer, chimps on regular diet excrete high lignan and phytoestrogen levels.Clin Chim Acta. 1986 Jul 30;158(2):147.

Humans are the only mammals in whom gout develops spontaneously. Hyperuricemia only commonly develops in humans. Humans already synthesize UA and lack uricase enzymes so dietary uric acid in meat doesn't go through oxidative degradation and UA raise levels up to 10xs higher than other mammals, causing gout, nephrolithiasis and CVD in humans. Purine-free diet reduces UA from 297mmol/L to 178. Annals of Internal Med. 2005; 143;7, 501.

Kathmandu Univ Med J (KUMJ). 2004 Oct-Dec;2(4):336-43.
Retrospective analysis of abdominal surgeries at Nepalgunj Medical College (NGMC), Nepalgunj, Nepal: 2 year's experience.
Khan S, Khan IU, Aslam S, Haque A.
BACKGROUND: Abdominal surgeries are the commonest major operations that are performed in the department of surgery. AIM: To find out the different causes of emergency and elective abdominal surgeries at Nepalgunj Medical College Teaching Hospital (NGMCTH) Nepalgunj, Nepal...CONCLUSION: Over all, cholecystectomy for cholecystitis with cholelithiasis was the commonest operation, which was done in last two years. This disease may be because of excessive use of saturated animal fat and vegetable oil. Appendicitis was the 3rd commonest cause of abdominal surgery. Nepal, being a Hindu country, people consume excessive amount of meat, and possibly due to this, the disease of the appendix was very high as compared to other Asian countries where people live on bulk cellulose diet.

And the trends are similar for all acquired/mostly preventable diseases among humans. The human genome isn't mutating that fast, it is the diet that is changing after direct lineage co-evolved with raw fruit, sprouts, leafy greens and flowers for tens of millions of years. Supplementing with burnt meat, HFCS, refined grains, alcohol, etc after creating tools didn't cause a digestive overhaul in the relatively recent past.

The hominoidea digestive system was formed well before fire kindling and tool creations. There is no evolutionary mechanism that could, in theory, cause humans to adapt genes to what they chose to create using stimulus motives- cooked/processed food products including animals (which are particularly noisome for humans to witness as they struggle and squeal for their lives) as humans are specialized fruit-eaters, digesting fruit best with opposing digestive processes to meat consumption and fruit reverses diseases caused by meat consumption. Evolution is not directional. Humans made tools for food PRODUCTS. Food product tools didn't make humans. Humans preserve natural aversions to rotting flesh and killing, that parallels an inability to safely digest denatured animals.

So, culturists have begun removing body parts (breasts, appendixes, etc) while maintaining acculturated diets that increase the varried diseases.

The power humans have in controlling their health is undermined by the temptation to renounce personal responsibility and drift into an inheritance of customary diets that include cheap/denatured/processed food products of animals, HFCS, bleached/genetically modified grains, etc. Humans haven't adapted to any of the biochemically incompatible, disease-causing food products removed from nature, especially meat.

Frugivorously,
Chris