Nigerian Couple Stuns Genetic Experts, Give Birth To White Baby Girl

shijing

shijing

The Living Force
At first glance this seems like some kind of hoax, but as far as I can tell (Oxford University's Bryan Sykes is involved) it's not. The text and picture below are from:

http://bossip.com/268491/nigerian-couple-stuns-genetic-experts-give-birth-to-white-baby-girl/

black-parents-white-baby-2.png


Blue-eyed blonde Nmachi, whose name means “Beauty of God” in the Nigerian couple’s homeland, has baffled genetics experts because neither Ben nor wife Angela have ANY mixed-race family history. Pale genes skipping generations before cropping up again could have explained the baby’s appearance. Ben also stressed: “My wife is true to me. Even if she hadn’t been, the baby still wouldn’t look like that. “We both just sat there after the birth staring at her for ages – not saying anything.” Doctors at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup – where Angela, from nearby Woolwich, gave birth – have told the parents Nmachi is definitely no albino.

Ben, who came to Britain with his wife five years ago and works for South Eastern Trains, said: “She doesn’t look like an albino child anyway – not like the ones I’ve seen back in Nigeria or in books. She just looks like a healthy white baby.” “But we don’t know of any white ancestry. We wondered if it was a genetic twist. “But even then, what is with the long curly blonde hair?” Professor Bryan Sykes, head of Human Genetics at Oxford University and Britain’s leading expert, yesterday called the birth “extraordinary”. He said: “In mixed race humans, the lighter variant of skin tone may come out in a child – and this can sometimes be startlingly different to the skin of the parents.

“This might be the case where there is a lot of genetic mixing, as in Afro-Caribbean populations. But in Nigeria there is little mixing.” Prof Sykes said BOTH parents would have needed “some form of white ancestry” for a pale version of their genes to be passed on. But he added: “The hair is extremely unusual. Even many blonde children don’t have blonde hair like this at birth.” The expert said some unknown mutation was the most likely explanation. He admitted: “The rules of genetics are complex and we still don’t understand what happens in many cases.”

“She’s beautiful and I love her. Her colour doesn’t matter. She’s a miracle baby. “But still, what on earth happened here?” Her husband told how their son Chisom, four, was even more confused than them by his new sister. Ben said: “Our other daughter Dumebi is only two so she’s too young to understand.
“But our boy keeps coming to look at his sister and then sits down looking puzzled.

“We’re a black family. Suddenly he has a white sister.” Ben continued: “Of course, we are baffled too and want to know what’s happened. But we understand life is very strange.

“All that matters is that she’s healthy and that we love her. She’s a proud British Nigerian.”
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It will be interesting to see what happens over the next year. I think it's possible that she may get a little darker. Thanks for posting Shijing!
 
Laura said:
Any indication they'll be doing DNA studies?
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Not that I've been able to find yet -- but I can't see that they won't, unless the couple themselves make a personal decision not to. I think most geneticists would be chomping at the bit on this one.

truth seeker said:
It will be interesting to see what happens over the next year. I think it's possible that she may get a little darker.
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That would be my guess too, and I do hope someone follows up on this.

Here's another article with a bit more information, from:

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2010/07/20/mystery-as-nigerian-couple-give-birth-to-white-baby-in-uk/

A black couple, Ben and Angela Ihegboro, has amazed genetics experts, as their newly born baby, Nmanchi, is a white, blue-eyed blonde.

The couple, of Woolwich, south London, have two other children: four-year-old, Chisom, and sister, Dumebi, 2.

According to a report in the Sun of London, Ben, 44, a railway customer services adviser, said: he and his wife just sat there after the birth staring at her for ages – not saying anything.

“The first thing I said was ‘What the flip?’, he recalled. Ben added later that: “Of course, she’s mine. My wife is true to me. Even if she hadn’t been, the baby still wouldn’t look like that.”

Nmachi, whose name means “Beauty of God” in Nigerian parlance, was born at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup, Kent, where doctors there told them she is not an albino.

Ben, who went to Britain with Angela five years ago and works with South Eastern trains said: “She doesn’t look like an albino child anyway – not like the ones I’ve seen back in Nigeria or in books. She just looks like a healthy white baby.”

He went on: “My mum is a black Nigerian although she has a bit fairer skin than mine.”

Angela, 35, declared that Nmachi’s colour doesn’t matter. “She’s a miracle baby. But still, what on earth happened here? However, the child has baffled the genetics experts because neither Ben nor wife Angela has any mixed-race family history.

We don’t know of any white ancestry. We wondered if it was a genetic twist. But even then, what’s with the long curly blonde hair?”

DNA test to verify paternity

Chisom, the couple’s four-year-old son, was quoted as remarking: “We are a black family. Suddenly we have a white sister.” Ben also noted “We are baffled too and want to know what happened, but we understand life is very strange.”

It was not immediately made clear whether or not a DNA test was done to verify her paternity. Often described as a “fingerprint,” DNA is more comparable to a “body print” inclusive of internal workings and future traits and is often almost 100 percent exact.

However, Prof. Bryan Sykes, Head of Human Genetics at Oxford University and Britain’s leading expert, called the birth “extraordinary” He said: “In mixed race humans, the lighter variant of skin tone may come out in a child – and this can sometimes be startlingly different to the skin of the parents.

This might be the case where there is a lot of genetic mixing, as in Afro-Caribbean populations. But in Nigeria there is little mixing.”

Sykes said both parents would have needed “some form of white ancestry” for a pale version of their genes to be passed on. He added: “The hair is extremely unusual.

Even many blonde children don’t have blonde hair like this at birth.” The expert said some unknown mutation was the most likely explanation. “The rules of genetics are complex and we still don’t understand what happens in many cases.”

Genetic mutation

Other experts, however, propose that some form of unknown racial or genetic mutation was the most likely explanation for Nmachi’s colour. A genetic expert, Dr. Rick Kittles who runs a genetic tracing company, African Ancestry Inc., described “race” as white or black, and more of a social concept than a real biological concept.”

In his words: “Race is based on two things: skin colour and ancestry. You can’t really (see) somebody’s ancestry, but you can tell their skin colour.” According to him, while physical features are determined by a small number of genes, genes do not determine race specifically.

Kittles feels strongly that race and ethnicity are separate. He argues that genes determining physical features do not determine internal makeup or predisposition to certain diseases.

Kittles who had always been interested in genetics in African populations started working on collecting data many years ago and his from studies determined that three out of 10 African men had European genetic heritages.

Up to 85 percent of Kittles’ African Ancestry’s clients are an exact match with ethnic groups in the database. The other 15 percent are closely related.
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I remember reading about a similar but reversed case years ago. There was a white couple having a black baby. The first suspect was the woman of course but eventually it turned out that shortly before having sex with his wife, the husband was with another black woman (a prostitute as far as I remember) who was with a withe man right before. It doesn't of course mean that's the same case here, especially given that black genes are dominant (correct me if I'm wrong), but it just struck me they were considering the wife's fidelity only. FWIW...
 
Shijing said:
Here's another article with a bit more information, from:

http://www.vanguardngr.com/2010/07/20/mystery-as-nigerian-couple-give-birth-to-white-baby-in-uk/

A genetic expert, Dr. Rick Kittles who runs a genetic tracing company, African Ancestry Inc., described “race” as white or black, and more of a social concept than a real biological concept.”

In his words: “Race is based on two things: skin colour and ancestry. You can’t really (see) somebody’s ancestry, but you can tell their skin colour.” According to him, while physical features are determined by a small number of genes, genes do not determine race specifically.

Kittles feels strongly that race and ethnicity are separate. He argues that genes determining physical features do not determine internal makeup or predisposition to certain diseases.
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The above extract from the second article is what interests me most. I think this is a great opportunity to do some research and possibly show that many external features have nothing at all to do with "race".
 
There are several articles up on Sott about albinos in Africa, especially Tanzania. And how they are hunted and maimed or killed for their body parts and because they are thought of as magical/evil.

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/208211-Mother-son-albinos-killed-in-Burundi

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/195200-Albinos-butchered-for-magic-potions-in-Tanzania

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/196307-Four-sentenced-to-hang-for-killing-albino-in-Tanzania

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/176452-Bid-to-Stop-the-Killing-of-Albinos-in-Tanzania

These all seem to have genetic mutation going on. There seem to be quite a few of them in Tanzania.

The long, golden locks is really interesting to see, though.
 
Hi everybody

I'm sorry because this is something that someone told me years ago, and i don't remember who, probably a pathner or friend. This conversation happened when i was studing in College, the point is that i was told speaking about genetics, that a baby's race could be different from the real parents race, i was told it was very odd and almost improbable but a insignificant posibilitie existed, because of the genetics combinations.
 
Corto said:
she does have facial features of African baby, IMO
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I dunno, all babies features, regardless of race look about the same to me. She does seem black to me as well but this is probably due to her being surrounded by her black family. The only anomoly, for me anyway, is the blond hair and blue eyes. I've seen many black babies who are this light skinned at birth but not usually if both parents are dark and there is no white ancestry in prior generations. And they usually darken as time goes by. People in my family alway look at the babies ears which are often a darker shade than the rest of their skin to get an idea of what the future skin tone may be.
 
Odyssey said:
Corto said:
she does have facial features of African baby, IMO
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I dunno, all babies features, regardless of race look about the same to me. She does seem black to me as well but this is probably due to her being surrounded by her black family. The only anomoly, for me anyway, is the blond hair and blue eyes. I've seen many black babies who are this light skinned at birth but not usually if both parents are dark and there is no white ancestry in prior generations. And they usually darken as time goes by. People in my family alway look at the babies ears which are often a darker shade than the rest of their skin to get an idea of what the future skin tone may be.
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I have to agree with this. If that same child were placed around a cauacsian family, I doubt anyone would think she stuck out in any way. As Odyssey says, many black children are very light skinned when they are first born. I was as well. The reason for this is probably because my great grandfather was Irish (I'm told). What makes this case so unusual is that the family has no knowledge of any caucasian ancestry.
 
Although I found this article in the New York Times, it makes what I think are interesting arguments both for and opposing. I'm also looking for a more scientific paper if I can find one that will show the research behind this as I would like to confirm the veracity of the doctors findings and may be more accurate, but perhaps this will do for now.

_http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/science/082200sci-genetics-race.html

Do Races Differ? Not Really, DNA Shows
By NATALIE ANGIER

In these glossy, lightweight days of an election year, it seems, they can't build metaphorical tents big or fast enough for every politician who wants to pitch one up and invite the multicultural folds to "Come on under!" The feel-good message that both parties seek to convey is: regardless of race or creed, we really ARE all kin beneath the skin.

Yet whatever the calculated quality of this new politics of inclusion, its sentiment accords firmly with scientists' growing knowledge of the profound genetic fraternity that binds together human beings of the most seemingly disparate origins.

Scientists have long suspected that the racial categories recognized by society are not reflected on the genetic level.

But the more closely that researchers examine the human genome -- the complement of genetic material encased in the heart of almost every cell of the body -- the more most of them are convinced that the standard labels used to distinguish people by "race" have little or no biological meaning.

They say that while it may seem easy to tell at a glance whether a person is Caucasian, African or Asian, the ease dissolves when one probes beneath surface characteristics and scans the genome for DNA hallmarks of "race."

As it turns out, scientists say, the human species is so evolutionarily young, and its migratory patterns so wide, restless and rococo, that it has simply not had a chance to divide itself into separate biological groups or "races" in any but the most superficial ways.

"Race is a social concept, not a scientific one," said Dr. J. Craig Venter, head of the Celera Genomics Corporation in Rockville, Md. "We all evolved in the last 100,000 years from the same small number of tribes that migrated out of Africa and colonized the world."

Dr. Venter and scientists at the National Institutes of Health recently announced that they had put together a draft of the entire sequence of the human genome, and the researchers had unanimously declared, there is only one race -- the human race.

Dr. Venter and other researchers say that those traits most commonly used to distinguish one race from another, like skin and eye color, or the width of the nose, are traits controlled by a relatively few number of genes, and thus have been able to change rapidly in response to extreme environmental pressures during the short course of Homo sapiens history.

And so equatorial populations evolved dark skin, presumably to protect against ultraviolet radiation, while people in northern latitudes evolved pale skin, the better to produce vitamin D from pale sunlight.

"If you ask what percentage of your genes is reflected in your external appearance, the basis by which we talk about race, the answer seems to be in the range of .01 percent," said Dr.

Harold P. Freeman, the chief executive, president and director of surgery at North General Hospital in Manhattan, who has studied the issue of biology and race. "This is a very, very minimal reflection of your genetic makeup."

Unfortunately for social harmony, the human brain is exquisitely attuned to differences in packaging details, prompting people to exaggerate the significance of what has come to be called race, said Dr. Douglas C. Wallace, a professor of molecular genetics at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.

"The criteria that people use for race are based entirely on external features that we are programmed to recognize," he said.

"And the reason we're programmed to recognize them is that it's vitally important to our species that each of us be able to distinguish one individual from the next.

Our whole social structure is based on visual cues, and we've been programmed to recognize them, and to recognize individuals."

By contrast with the tiny number of genes that make some people dark-skinned and doe-eyed, and others as pale as napkins, scientists say that traits like intelligence, artistic talent and social skills are likely to be shaped by thousands, if not tens of thousands, of the 80,000 or so genes in the human genome, all working in complex combinatorial fashion.

The possibility of such gene networks shifting their interrelationships wholesale in the course of humanity's brief foray across the globe, and being skewed in significant ways according to "race" is "a bogus idea," said Dr. Aravinda Chakravarti, a geneticist at Case Western University in Cleveland.

"The differences that we see in skin color do not translate into widespread biological differences that are unique to groups."

Dr. Jurgen K. Naggert, a geneticist at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Me., said: "These big groups that we characterize as races are too heterogeneous to lump together in a scientific way.

If you're doing a DNA study to look for markers for a particular disease, you can't use 'Caucasians' as a group. They're too diverse.

No journal would accept it."

Yet not every researcher sees race as a meaningless or antediluvian notion.

"I think racial classifications have been useful to us," said Dr. Alan Rogers, a population geneticist and professor of anthropology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. "We may believe that most differences between races are superficial, but the differences are there, and they are informative about the origins and migrations of our species. To do my work, I have to get genetic data from different parts of the world, and look at differences within groups and between groups, so it helps to have labels for groups."

And there are a handful of researchers who continue to insist that there are fundamental differences among the three major races that extend to the brain.

Dr. J. Philippe Rushton, a psychologist at University of Western Ontario in Canada and author of "Race, Evolution and Behavior," is perhaps the most tireless proponent of the belief that the three major races differ genetically in ways that affect average group I.Q. and a propensity toward criminal behavior.

He asserts that his work reveals east Asians to have the largest average brain size and intelligence scores, those of African descent to have the smallest average brains and I.Q.'s, and those of European ancestry to fall in the middle.

Yet many scientists have objected to his methods and interpretations, arguing, among other things, that the link between total brain size and intelligence is far from clear. Women, for example, have smaller brains than men do, even when adjusted for their comparatively smaller body mass, yet average male and female I.Q. scores are the same.

For that matter, fossil evidence suggests that Neanderthals had very sizable brains, and they did not even last long enough to invent standardized tests.

Dr. Eric S. Lander, a genome expert at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass., admits that, because research on the human genome has just begun, he cannot deliver a definitive, knockout punch to those who would argue that significant racial differences must be reflected somewhere in human DNA and will be found once researchers get serious about looking for them. But as Dr.

Lander sees it, the proponents of such racial divides are the ones with the tough case to defend.

"There's no scientific evidence to support substantial differences between groups," he said, "and the tremendous burden of proof goes to anyone who wants to assert those differences."

Although research into the structure and sequence of the human genome is in its infancy, geneticists have pieced together a rough outline of human genomic history, variously called the "Out of Africa" or "Evolutionary Eve" hypothesis.

By this theory, modern Homo sapiens originated in Africa 200,000 to 100,000 years ago, at which point a relatively small number of them, maybe 10,000 or so, began migrating into the Middle East, Europe, Asia and across the Bering land mass into the Americas. As they traveled, they seem to have completely or largely displaced archaic humans already living in the various continents, either through calculated acts of genocide, or simply outreproducing them into extinction.

Since the African emigrations began, a mere 7,000 generations have passed. And because the founding population of émigrés was small, it could only take so much genetic variation with it.

As a result of that combination -- a limited founder population and a short time since dispersal -- humans are strikingly homogeneous, differing from one another only once in a thousand subunits of the genome.

"We are a small population grown large in the blink of an eye," Dr. Lander said.

"We are a little village that's grown all over the world, and we retain the genetic variation seen in that little village."

The human genome is large, though, composed of three billion-odd subunits, or bases, which means that even a tiny percentage of variation from one individual to the next amounts to a sizable number of genetic discrepancies.

The question is, where in the genome is that variation found, and how is it distributed among different populations?

Through transglobal sampling of neutral genetic markers -- stretches of genetic material that do not help create the body's functioning proteins but instead are composed of so-called junk DNA -- researchers have found that, on average, 88 percent to 90 percent of the differences between people occur within their local populations, while only about 10 percent to 12 percent of the differences distinguish one population, or race, from another.

To put it another way, the citizens of any given village in the world, whether in Scotland or Tanzania, hold 90 percent of the genetic variability that humanity has to offer.

But that 90/10 ratio is just an average, and refers only to junk-DNA markers.

For the genetic material that encodes proteins, the picture is somewhat more complex. Many workhorse genes responsible for basic organ functions show virtually no variability from individual to individual, which means they are even less "race specific" than are neutral genetic markers.

Some genes, notably those of the immune system, show enormous variability, but the variability does not track with racial groupings. Then there are the genes that control pigmentation and other physical features.

These also come in a wide assortment of "flavors," but unlike immune-related genes, are often distributed in population-specific clusters, resulting in Swedes who look far more like other Swedes than they do like Australian Aborigines.

A few group differences are more than skin deep.

Among the most famous examples are the elevated rates of sickle-cell anemia among African-Americans and of beta-thalassemia, another hemoglobin disorder, among those of Mediterranean heritage.

Both traits evolved to help the ancestors of these groups resist malaria infection, but both prove lethal when inherited in a double dose. As with differences in skin pigmentation, the pressure of the environment to develop a group-wide trait was powerful, and the means to do so simple and straightforward, through the alteration of a single gene.

Another cause of group differences is the so-called founder effect. In such cases, the high prevalence of an unusual condition in a population can be traced to a founding ancestor who happened to carry a novel mutation into the region.

Over many generations of comparative isolation and inbreeding, the community, like it or not, became "enriched" with the founder's disorder. The founder effect explains the high incidence of Huntington's neurodegenerative disease in the Lake Maracaibo region of Venezuela, and of Tay-Sachs disease among Ashkenazi Jews.

But Dr. Naggert emphasized that medical geneticists had a much better chance of unearthing these founder effects by scrutinizing small, isolated and well-defined populations, like the northern Finns, the Basques of Spain, or the Amish of Pennsylvania, than they did by going after "races."

Dr. Sonia S. Anand, an assistant professor of medicine at McMaster University in Ontario, proposed that clinicians think about ethnicity rather than race when seeking clues to how disease patterns differ from one group to the next.

"Ethnicity is a broad concept that encompasses both genetics and culture," Dr. Anand said. "Thinking about ethnicity is a way to bring together questions of a person's biology, lifestyle, diet, rather than just focusing on race. Ethnicity is about phenotype and genotype, and, if you define the terms of your study, it allows you to look at differences between groups in a valid way."

In investigating the reasons behind the high incidence of cardiovascular disease among people from the Indian subcontinent, for example, Dr. Anand discovered that Indians had comparatively elevated amounts of clotting factors in their blood.

Beyond tallying up innate traits, she also takes into account how Indian culture and life habits may pose added risks for heart disease -- noting, for example, that a woman's status in India is directly proportional to her number of belly rolls.

In Dr. Freeman's view, the science of human origins can help to heal any number of wounds, and that, he says is sweet justice.

"Science got us into this problem in the first place, with its measurements of skulls and its emphasis on racial differences and racial classifications," Dr. Freeman said.

"Scientists should now get us out of it. They need to be leaders in promoting an evolutionary understanding of the human race."
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There is this movie called the Human stain(2003) starring antony hopkins and nicole kidman. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0308383/

Trailer: http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1770914073/

Here is a synopsis of what it is about.

"The story of Coleman Silk (Hopkins), a distinguished professor at a prestigious New England college whose professional life is shattered by allegations of racism and whose personal life is infected with cancer of a lie he has been living with for fifty years."

The lie or secret is that his parents were black, yet for all appearances he is white.

Here is a review from an Imdb user.

"*** This review may contain spoilers ***


Although I enjoyed this film and rate it pretty high, I have to admit this was more than a bit of a stretch for most people, and for at least four good reasons:

1 - Anthony Hopkins being a light-skinned black man; 2 - Nicole Kidman being a white trailer trash person (no person that poor looks that good!); 3 - A beautiful woman like Kidman falling for a much-older man like Hopkins unless it was for money, which he does not have in here, and 4 - Ed Harris' character would have been locked up and unable to affect things in the end, as shown here.

If you can go along somehow with all of those credibility issues, you have an interesting film on your hands to watch. (A lot of good movies - classic to modern--day - ask you to suspend belief, so this is nothing new in films.)

Once again, I enjoyed the acting of Hopkins, one of the best of his generation. Just the looks on his face alone are fascinating in this film. Kidman is interesting, too, with my only complaint being her overuse of the f-word. Ninety percent of them in this movie come from her. Gary Sinise is the nice-guy friend who narrates the film.

This is a deep human-interest story of a black man who winds up - in an earlier era - posing as a white man so he can have a better chance at a successful career. In the process, he sacrifices his roots, his family and siblings, which comes back to haunt him. He's also a victim, ironically, of political correctness on the subject of race. Wow, it's unusual - and refreshing - to see how PC can run amok and hurt well-meaning people, as demonstrated in this story.

Going into further details might spoil the rest of it, so I'll end here. This is a film I found surprisingly engrossing and if you can withstand the f-word, one I recommend. "

Just for those who might want to delve into what it might be like being such a person and what choices such a person might face in todays world.
 
This might be abit off-topic but I thought I should share since we are on the subject of race.

I have seen 2 interesting documentaries on race.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-modern-racist-paradigm/

The above gives an interesting take on the modern racist paradigm. You can clearly note the maker has an agenda and a message so therefore it could be classified as his opinion. Interesting touchy sensitive topic.

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/racism-history/

This one looks well at the history of racism as we have come to know it today. This is abit difficult to watch but I think they tried to make it as factual as possible.

EDIT: I was just rewatching some of those documentaries and I realized how race is one of the most potent issues in society today. People can ignore and say it doesnt exist but it's everywhere to be seen. I have looked around the forum, read the wave and I saw issues like religion being discussed - another one of those potent issues and how religion as we know it is only meant to re-enforce illussions. You also hear alot of talk nowadays about the whole class war, elitist vs the rest of us. All these issues are getting alot of attention. Why isnt the issue of race not getting attention from any of the alternate new-age media outlets or forums like this? Even from what I can remember from what I have read from the Cs transcripts, race is rarely touched upon.

The only issue to do with race is with israel and jews. Uhmm, excuse me? There are asians, arabs, hispanic, blacks, aboriginals, poor native americans you rarely hear anything about them anymore... All these other races exist and for them, race is a HUUUUUUUUGE issue. How is this going to be handled by all these people looking to build a new world? I mean, I dont want to touch on this but, the world has been destroyed by well, you can call them pyschopaths but what all these other races see, is WHITE people. Good luck convincing them on pyschopaths....
 
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