Research into global health has mostly been thought of, up until now, as a relatively bipartisan issue. Research into the Human Genome has advanced, partially because administrations have given it adequate funding. There are exceptions, of course, such as George W. Bush’s defunding of stem cell research, but overall research in global public health has advanced in the past few decades, thanks to strong support from both sides of the aisle. Part of this is because medicine has been thought of as relatively apolitical. People of different races are usually prescribed the same prescription drugs, for example.
A study, however, in The New York Times, on immigrant groups from South East Asia has demonstrated that different ethnic groups may respond differently to different changes in gut bacteria. In particular, in one study, the enzyme needed to metabolize plant fiber was replaced by microbes necessary to digest fats and starches. “Certainly diet is part of the cause but there are other factors like changes in stress, exercise, environment, water supply and medications that we were not able to measure,” the researcher in one study that focused on groups from Thailand, said.
One research group studied immigrants from Thailand, and had remarkable findings: within six months of arriving in the U.S, their gut microbes known as Prevotella decreased, and they gained the gut microbes known as Bacteroides, a common member of western microbiomes. As written in an NPR study, second-generation Hmong- and Karen-Americans — born in the U.S. to parents who moved from abroad — had microbiomes that were most similar to those of Caucasian Americans.
This is likely to have far-reaching implications not only for public health, put for politics. As many nativists are worried about immigrants, particularly those from Latin American and South Asian countries, eating up the welfare system, they are likely to weaponize these findings, if they were to become widely known. There is no evidence that any of these microbial changes were medically significant, but this could nonetheless have wide-ranging implications in the future.
-Charles Moxley
