This Week on Ujima – C-19, Genetics and #BLM

~ Cheryl

As I mentioned yesterday, my Ujima show for this week got postponed until yesterday morning thanks to technical issues. It is now available on the Listen Again service, and you can find it here. That page might not say it is Women’s Outlook, but that’s because it is an automated system.

I only had one interview this week. It is with Professor Julian Gough who used to be at Bristol University and is at the Medical Research Council in Cambridge (MRC). He’s involved in a project to look at possible genetic links to COVID-19 susceptibility. This is obviously of interest at Ujima because of the much higher death rates in people from non-white ethnic backgrounds.

There’s a potentially contentious issue here because of the focus of people like Cummings on eugenics, but that’s medical nonsense. All human DNA is very similar. The difference between individual humans is around 0.1%, and we are only 1.2% different from chimps. So the racist nonsense that somehow white people are completely different and massively superior to all other humans is just that, nonsense. However, as Professor Gough explains, some genes are linked to specific diseases (breast cancer, for example), and sometimes those genes are more prevalent in some ethnic groups than others. Furthermore, if there is a C-19 gene, it might not be ethnically linked, but instead be widespread throughout the population, because we already know that systemic racism is a major cause of health inequalities.

A key part of Professor Gough’s work is that he needs data, and you can help. Or at least you can if you have had your DNA sequenced. It doesn’t matter whether you know whether you have had C-19 or not, or even if you’ve had no symptoms. And it doesn’t matter where in the world you live, because the pandemic is global. So if you have DNA data, Professor Gough would love to hear from you. You can join the project here.

By the way, I did ask about data security. UK universities are very strict about such things. Your data is far more at risk from the private companies that do the seqencing than from the MRC.

The rest of the show was taken up with me pontificating about statues taking dip in Bristol harbour, and playing lots of civil rights songs by Black artists. Here’s the playlist:

  • Tracy Chapman – Taking about a Revolution
  • Tom Robinson Band – Long Hot Summer
  • David Byrne – Hell You Talmbout
  • Bob Marley – Slave Driver
  • Black Roots – Bristol Rock
  • Amaal Nuux – Last Ones Down
  • The Specials – Racist Friend
  • Eddy Grant – Boys in the Street
  • Beyoncé – Freedom
  • Jimmy Cliff – Peace Officer
  • Prince – Baltimore
  • Alicia Keys – We Gotta Pray
  • Stevie Wonder – Living for the City
  • James Brown – Black and I’m Proud
  • Otis Redding – Change is Gonna Come
  • Janelle Monáe – Hell You Talmbout

Silence is the Enemy, and Sound is the Weapon.