As noted in my last post, the selective advantage of heterozygosity for the sickle allele at the beta-globin locus has been known since Allison’s report in 1954 (Lancet). Nevertheless, a plausible and detailed mechanism to account for the protective effect of an...
According to both academic lore and history (Paulos, 1985; Ryerson, 2004), the late Sidney Morgenbesser, a professor of philosophy at Columbia and a renowned conversationalist and wit, was once listening to an Oxford colleague, J. L. Austin, lecturing on the...