Wow... just... wow. Over 40 years after Loving v. Virginia, and we still have people making these kinds of comments.

I'm sure he lumps gay couples into this... maybe they're the "other species". ::rolls eyes::

Oh my. That is just disgusting. I'm a Finn married to a Dane. I wonder if that means that I'm married to someone from a different 'species', or whether this guy thinks that because we are all Scands we are still keeping it 'pure'.

Ugh.

Godd what is our society coming to, with us marrying other "species" like the Italians and the Irish? Someone please send this guy back where he came from: the 1800's

Oh my, that's totally not racist at all. He doesn't think other races are inferior, he just thinks that the products of "miscegination" are inferior, like how a liger cub is often too weak to survive in the wild... /sarcasm.

Seriously, Finns and Danes are not different species. Darker-skinned and lighter-skinned folks are not different species. It's incredibly retrogressive to say so. It's like arguing that the sun revolves around the earth.

Even if we set aside the pervasive racism, I just don't get his logic. Let's suppose we grant the data is as he implies. Why would this mean the study doesn't apply in the US?

This man is just laughable.
He is from America. The country which is the symbol of ethnics mish-mash.

Or maybe he just enjoys the sound of his own voice and he doesnt realise what he is talking about?

The idea of "racial/genetic purity" is so twisted and false...

It's pretty evident that the newscasters are laughing at this "doctor" and making fun of him. Not even Fox News is taking him seriously, so I'm not too afraid.

That is disturbingly "Aryan Race" to me. "The Swedes have a pure bloodline! Therefore they are superior!"

It terrifies me that people actually think this way.

I had an epiphany about this when I watched my first cat show a few years ago (please, hear me out). There are about 30 recognized cat breeds. I was surprised to learn that most of the pedigreed, fancy-pants cats competing at these shows aren't necessarily "pure" in terms of having ancestors only from a particular breed. In fact, breeders add other types of cat to a bloodline in order to produce a desired trait a few generations later, such as better kidney health in Persian cats. It's a GOOD thing to mix it up.

Show cat breeding has a slightly creepy Bene Gesserit eugenics vibe, but it's probably similar to farm animal husbandry, which, for some reason, I find less creepy.

So anyway, a grand champion British Shorthair (a cat breed) doesn't necessarily come from a pure British Shorthair bloodline. It just has the characteristics of other cats that we have agreed to call British Shorthair. It fits a list of characteristics determined by the CFA. Its heritage may be a mix of American Shorthair, Russian Blue, mutt, whatever. If it came out looking like a British Shorthair, and if its children consistently look like British Shorthairs, we call it a British Shorthair, and it wins the ribbon.

Makes sense from a genotype/phenotype standpoint. There is not a "British Shorthair gene." Different genes confer grey fur, solid coat, big eyes, short hair, etc. Put the genes together in one animal, and you have a British Shorthair.

But (and this is the epiphany) you can get to any particular phenotype from variety of paths in your family tree. Not only is human racial purity a myth, it's also a bad idea (see: Queen Victoria and hemophilia)

@Cycles - it's interesting that you say that. I'm curious - does that mean that when you're showing a cat you don't have to show its lineage to prove what 'breed' it is? It's all just based on how it looks?

It's very different with horses - when you show a horse in a breed class you have to be able to prove that both its parents are the same breed. The only leniency is when one of the parents is 7/8ths of that breed - it's decided that a pure + a 7/8ths = a pure. Or something like that...

However a few hundred years ago things were a bit different - for example, the thoroughbred racehorse (which is today considered 'pure' and is a closed gene pool, ie every horse is inbred) was originally created by breeding a few Arabs and a Barc (if I'm recalling correctly..) and a few other horses were 'added to the mix' to create certain traits.

It is interesting to see that what is defined as 'pure' is rarely so when you look into its history.

As to this video, I thought it was just garbage. It seemed like no one was taking the discussion seriously so I'm not sure why we would.

I thought the presenters were deliberately not taking him seriously in case someone tried to sue them, so that they could prove they didn't support his views regardless of their actual beliefs/policies.

You guys are making something out of nothing. He's saying that you can't necessarily make health comparisons between countries because the genetic factors affecting those populations might be different. Big deal. Genes are thought to control much of a population's predisposition to certain health outcomes, including health outcomes. Of course, the clip is SUSPICIOUSLY short so its actually impossible to even tell what they are talking about.

opminded, you're not being a Devils Advocate but is being purposefully dense.

Opminded, why on earth would he use the word "pure," if he was not directly criticising what we can only assume is the "impure" system of inter-ethnic marriage? He doesn't just make an objective comment on the genetic issues surrounding mixed-race offspring (issues which, might I add, are non-existent, as "race" is itself a highly foggy concept), but describes them as "other species" and uses this as a rationale for why marriage does not make Americans happy, as it does the Scandinavians.

Look, I'm Irish. The sad fact is that if I had babies with an American, they'd be pretty much exactly the same as anyone else's babies. Although hopefully they'd understand the difference between "species" and "ethnicity".

During the middle ages, Christians considered marriage and sex with Jews bestiality, and many Americans in past centuries considered sex and marriage between whites and blacks bestiality as well. As "race", nation, and species are all constructs that classify and often rank, these words are easily interchangeable.

"he is delusional in thinking that some states allow us to marry (other) animals."
RE: Marriage between human and other species are actually not so uncommon in India and in other regions of the world where cultures believe in reincarnation. The above sentence implies a strict "us" vs them logic, despite the paranthetical "other" as well as a normative judgement that cultures that sanction such practices would be irrational, silly, or absurd.

Sorry Adam, I meant U.S. states. Fixed in text.

Just a heads up: The guy making an ass of himself is not a doctor, or even a guest on the show--he's a regular talking head on Fox and Friends.

@Cycles:

It's called hybrid vigor. As we know, inbred individuals (animals or humans) have a higher chance of having or carrying detrimental genes. It has been proven time and time again in nature that animals with diverse genetic backgrounds tend to be healthier and fitter with respect to survival and reproduction. There is no reason to assume the same wouldn't be true of humans.

Of course, humans as a whole are more genetically similar than pretty much any other species. A randomly selected German person and a randomly selected Nigerian person have more genes in common than two chimpanzees who live in the same group in Africa. We are so genetically similar that it is beyond ridiculous to refer to races as different species or sub-species.

Suspiciously short? What's in the clip is basically all you need to know, as there's really no right time to sincerely say there's a pure race out there. But if you really need to know, they're talking about a longitudinal study conducted in Finland that showed that married people are less likely to develop Alzheimer's than unmarried, widowed, or divorced people.

@opminded, wow! just wow! First you can make health comparisons between people of different countries precisely because we are all the same species. And we do. Everyday. Biologist and public health researchers all over the world share their data and generalize from it. And guess what? It works!

And that actually isn't what he is saying. He is saying that people in marriages in scandinavia have less dementia because they are inbred.

Interestingly, that isn't what the research says. It is the most bizarre leap of logic I have ever heard. If people who are married have lower rates of dementia in Scandinavia, then the same most likely holds true here as well. In fact, I would not be surprised if a similar study was done here with similar results.

And I figured out the clip, what the asshat was saying, and what the research was really about, quite quickly, thank you.

Very Hitler-esque thought process you have there, Mr. Kilmeade.

"Suspiciously short"? Maybe... but any time someone starts talking about "pure" races and people marrying "other species"... that's really all I need to hear. Terms like that have no place in a discussion of scientific matters. Or in any civilized discussion, for that matter.