Gregory Cochran

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Gregory Cochran
Born Gregory M. Cochran
1953 (age 70–71)
Citizenship American
Fields Physics, Anthropology
Institutions University of Utah
Alma mater University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
Known for The 10,000 Year Explosion

Gregory M. Cochran (born 1953) is a physicist and adjunct professor of anthropology[citation needed] at the University of Utah, known for hypotheses in evolutionary medicine and genetic anthropology. He argues that cultural innovation resulted in new and constantly shifting selection pressures for genetic change, thereby accelerating human evolution. He is co-author of the book The 10,000 Year Explosion.

Human evolution

In opposition to what he sees as the 'conventional wisdom' that civilization has been a static environment which imposed stabilizing selection on humans, Cochran, along with like minded anthropologists such as John D. Hawks,[1] contends that haplotype and other data indicate the selection of genes has been strongest since the advent of farming and civilization.[2]

Ashkenazi intelligence

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Cochran and co-authors Jason Hardy and Henry Harpending suggest that the widely observed high average IQ of Ashkenazi Jews may be attributed to natural selection for intelligence during the Middle Ages and a low rate of genetic inflow. Cochran et al. hypothesise that the occupational profile of the Jewish community in medieval Europe had resulted in selection pressure for mutations that increase intelligence, but can also result in hereditary neurological disorders.[3][4]

Infectious causation

Along with Paul W. Ewald, Cochran believes an evolutionary perspective suggests that common diseases are caused by pathogens. In a paper they point to a history of common diseases, once thought to be due to noninfectious environmental factors, being found to have an infectious origin;[5] for example, peptic ulcers, once thought to occur because of stress, are now believed to often be caused by the pathogenic bacteria Helicobacter pylori. The association of human papilloma virus with cervical cancer is another example. Cochran and Ewald propose that Koch's postulates are difficult to fulfill for the still unproven cases of infectious causation because of the focus on identifying the infectious agent which is often highly cryptic.

Homosexuality

A related hypothesis is that the proximal cause of homosexuality must be an infection.[6][7] Cochran suggests that one possible route of spread of an infectious agent that causes homosexuality is the larger number of sexual partners of homosexuals.

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One possible route would be sexual, whereby homo-sexual behavior could facilitate spread because of the larger numbers of partners homosexual males may have on average, relative to heterosexual males. Alternatively, transmission could be partly or entirely by one or more nonsexual routes, and homosexual orientation be a side effect of the infection that is unrelated to transmission.

— INFECTIOUS CAUSATION OF DISEASE:AN EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE[6]

The premise is that homosexuality reduces the number of offspring and would lead to the genes carried by a homosexual person to be progressively eliminated over generations. Cochran maintains that the observed level of prevalence of exclusive homosexuality (3 to 4 percent of men and 1 to 2 percent of women in the United States) means genes cannot be the cause of homosexuality. This argument is based on natural selection, the fitness cost of genes 'for' homosexuality being too great for its occurrence at a frequency above that of random mutation (~ 1 in 10,000). The argument assumes that evolution would have largely eliminated homosexuality related to non-infectious environmental causes, except novel ones.[8]

References

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External links