First, sexual transmissibility and then ...?

Squamous cervix cells covered with rod-shaped bacteria, Gardnerella vaginalis (source)

Bacterial vaginosis is a common disease among reproductive-aged women:

[It] is characterized by the loss of normal vaginal flora, predominantly hydrogen peroxide-producing Lactobacillus spp., and the increase in the number and species of other bacteria in vaginal fluid. The decrease in lactobacilli and increase in numerous facultative and anaerobic bacteria, some of which have only been recently characterized, may lead to changes in the characteristics of vaginal fluid, such as thin discharge and odor. (Koumans etal., 2007)

Its incidence correlates with the number of lifetime sex partners, and this correlation holds true even when one controls for a series of socioeconomic variables: poverty, smoking, body mass index, douching frequency, education, and oral contraceptive use (Koumans et al., 2007). It thus seems to be sexually transmissible, with suspicions falling particularly on the bacterium Gardnerella vaginalis:

Sexual activity is a risk factor for BV, and most experts believe that BV does not occur in women who have never had vaginal intercourse [12,13]. Epidemiologic studies are strongly supportive of sexual transmission of BV pathogens. There is a high occurrence of BV and concordance of flora in women who have sex with women, further suggesting sexual transmission is important in this setting [14-16]. It is not clear, however, whether one type of sexual activity may be more important in the pathogenesis of infection than another. As an example, oral-genital sex may be a more important risk factor than penile intromission into the vagina. (Sobel, 2012)

The incidence of bacterial vaginosis also correlates with ethnicity, being 51.4% of non-Hispanic blacks, 31.9% of Mexican Americans, and 23.2% of non-Hispanic whites. This correlation likewise holds true when the above socioeconomic variables are held constant. High incidences have also been found in sub-Saharan Africa (Pepin et al., 2011).

After studying these ethnic differences in vaginal flora, Ravel et al. (2010) concluded that they were normal and not pathological:

From these data we conclude that vaginal bacterial communities not dominated by species of Lactobacillus are common and appear normal in black and Hispanic women. The data from this study are in accordance with the results of Zhou et al. (17, 18), who studied the vaginal bacterial communities of white, black, and Japanese women. The reasons for these differences among ethnic groups are unknown, but it is tempting to speculate that the species composition of vaginal communities could be governed by genetically determined differences between hosts. These might include differences in innate and adaptive immune systems, the composition and quantity of vaginal secretions, and ligands on epithelial cell surfaces, among others.

The ultimate cause may be vaginal pH, which is higher in blacks and Hispanics than in Asians and non-Hispanic whites (Ravel etal., 2010). Or it may be differences in cytokine concentrations, with differences in vaginal pH being due to the differences in vaginal flora (Nomelini et al., 2010).

There has thus been a co-evolution between the vaginal environment and certain strains of vaginal bacteria. This co-evolution would have followed different trajectories in different human populations. In a monogamous population, possibilities for sexual transmission would have been sporadic and difficult to sustain. The picture is different in a population with a high incidence of polygyny, especially if the males often inherit or steal some of their co-wives from other males. Such a context would have favored bacteria that can spread from one co-wife to another and then to other sets of co-wives when circumstance permit.

But why wait for the right circumstances? Why not make them by manipulating the host’s behavior? Such behavioral manipulation sounds like science-fiction, yet it has been demonstrated in a wide range of animal species, often in surprisingly precise ways. So how could our bacterium manipulate its host? It wants to hop from one set of co-wives to another, but the regular male partner is standing in its way. What should it do?

First, it should facilitate female-to-female transmission among the co-wives. Second, it should disable the male’s propensity for mate guarding. Better yet, it should reverse the polarity, causing him to feel not jealousy but pleasure at the idea of being cuckolded.

This kind of manipulation occurs in the isopod Caecidotea intermedius. A parasite, Acanthocephalus dirus, infects it as a temporary host before infecting one of several freshwater fishes. When the parasite is still soft and immature, it cannot survive a fish eating its isopod host. It thus seeks to reduce this risk by suppressing conspicuous host behaviors, like mate guarding. Later, when the parasite becomes hard and mature, it can survive consumption of its host and now stimulates mate guarding (Galipaud et al., 2011; Mormann, 2010).

Cuckoldry is fatal to reproductive success, so any such tendency would soon flush itself out of the gene pool. For example, the neural networks for mate guarding might become more insensitive to outside tampering. This change, however, would in turn favor those parasites that could maintain such tampering. The eventual outcome would be an evolutionary compromise where mate guarding is impaired, but not enough to prevent reproductive success. The situation is different, though, if the parasite spreads to another population that has never developed such immunity.

Many sexual fetishes have been around for a long time and are often traceable to the ancient Greco-Roman world. Cuckold envy, however, seems relatively recent, the oldest references dating back to 17th century England (Kuchar, 2011, pp. 18-19). We may thus be looking at a sexually transmitted parasite that entered England with the expansion of world trade in the 17th century. But from where? Probably from a highly polygynous culture area, like West Africa.

This parasite might be a vaginal bacterium that first acquired sexual transmissibility and then an ability to manipulate host behavior. It might alternately be a strain of vaginal yeast. Indeed, vaginal strains of Candida albicans show a similar adaptation to sexual transmission via the partner’s mouth, i.e., they adhere better to saliva-coated surfaces than do other strains (Schmid et al., 1995).

References

Gaulipaud, M., Z. Gauthey, and L. Bollache. (2011). Pairing success and sperm reserve of male Gammarus pulex infected by Cyathocephalus truncatus (Cestoda: Spathebothriidea), Parasitology, 138, 11, 1429-1435.

Koumans E.H., M. Sternberg, C. Bruce, G. McQuillan, J. Kendrick, et al. (2007). The prevalence of bacterial vaginosis in the United States, 2001–2004; associations with symptoms, sexual behaviors, and reproductive health, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 34, 864–869.

http://journals.lww.com/stdjournal/Fulltext/2007/11000/The_Prevalence_of_Bacterial_Vaginosis_in_the.6.aspx

Kuchar, G. (2001). Rhetoric, Anxiety, and the Pleasures of Cuckoldry in the Drama of Ben Jonson and Thomas Middleton, Journal of Narrative Theory, 31 (1), Winter, pp. 1-30.

Mormann, K. (2010). Factors influencing parasite-related suppression of mating behavior in the isopod Caecidotea intermedius, Theses and Disserations, paper 48

http://via.library.depaul.edu/etd/48

Nomelini, R.S., A.P.B. Carrijo, S.J. Adad, A.A. Nunes, E.F.C. Murta. (2010). Relationship between infectious agents for vulvovaginitis and skin color, Sao Paulo Medical Journal, 128, 348-53

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1516-31802010000600007&script=sci_arttext

Pépin J., S. Deslandes, G. Giroux, F. Sobéla, N. Khonde, et al. (2011). The Complex Vaginal Flora of West African Women with Bacterial Vaginosis. PLoS ONE, 6(9): e25082. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0025082

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0025082

Ravel J, Gajer P, Abdo Z, Schneider GM, Sara S, et al. (2010). Vaginal microbiome of reproductive-age women. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences U SA, 108, 4680-4687.

http://www.pnas.org/content/108/suppl.1/4680.short

Schmid, J., P.R. Hunter, G.C. White, A.K. Nand, and R.D. Cannon. (1995). Physiological traits associated with success of Candida albicans strains as commensal colonizers and pathogens, Journal of Clinical Microbiology, 33, 2920–2926.

Sobel, J.D. (2012). Bacterial vaginosis, Wolters Kluwer, UpToDate

http://www.uptodate.com/contents/bacterial-vaginosis

Obama: White America's bogeyman?

Total fertility by race, 1980-2010 (source). Is the end of White America being hastened by the Obama presidency? Or is it actually being postponed?

Both the right and the left are trumpeting the Obama presidency as marking the end of White America. In a harshly worded column, conservative Ann Coulter argues that Obama and the Democratic Party are deliberately changing America’s demographics: 

If the same country that voted in 1980 had voted in 2012, Romney would have won a bigger landslide than Reagan did.

Most Americans don’t realize that, decades ago, the Democrats instituted a long-term plan to gradually turn the United States into a Third World nation. The country would become poorer and less free, but Democrats would have an unbeatable majority!

Under Teddy Kennedy’s 1965 immigration act, our immigration policy changed from one that replicated the existing ethnic population to one that strictly favored unskilled immigrants from the Third World. Since 1968, 85 percent of legal immigrants have come from what is euphemistically called “developing countries.” (Coulter, 2012)

Clearly, the 1965 immigration act was key to this demographic revolution. Just as key, however, were successive legislative changes, and increasingly lax enforcement, that progressively raised the levels of both legal and illegal immigration. Also key were differences in fertility rates. Non-White fertility stayed high long after White fertility had fallen during the 1960s and 1970s.

This demographic revolution, however, had the backing of both parties. Yes, the 1965 immigration act was ratified by a Democrat president, but it won the votes of most Republican lawmakers. Supporters included then congressman Gerald Ford (R) and then congressman Robert Dole (R). In fact, there was more opposition from Democrat lawmakers:

The House of Representatives voted 326 to 70 (82.5%) in favor of the act, while the Senate passed the bill by a vote of 76 to 18. In the senate, 52 Democrats voted yes, 14 no, and 1 abstained. Of the Republicans 24 voted yes, 3 voted no, and 1 abstained. (Wikipedia, 2012a)

After 1965, there came successive moves to increase the overall intake, and these moves were likewise Republican-backed. In fact, they were signed into law by Republican presidents. In 1986, Reagan proclaimed an amnesty that not only provided about three million illegal immigrants with citizenship but also set off a baby boom: 

Between 1987 and 1991, total fertility rates for foreign-born Hispanics increased from 3.2 to 4.4. This dramatic rise was the primary force behind the overall increase in the state’s total fertility rate during this period. Were it not for the large increase in fertility among Hispanic immigrants, fertility rates in California would have increased very little between 1987 and 1991. (Hill, 2002, pp. 27-28)

Bush Sr. signed into law the Immigration Act of 1990, which raised the annual legal intake of immigrants from 500,000 to 700,000 (Wikipedia, 2012c). And like his son, he declined to enforce sanctions against employers of illegal immigrants. By the time of Bush Jr., total immigration, both legal and illegal, was running at over one and a half million a year (Camarota, 2007). Far from ending illegal immigration, Reagan’s amnesty had set off a new wave of “undocumented workers” from south of the border. By 2007, the U.S. was home to an estimated 12.5 million illegal immigrants—more than four times the number that Reagan had amnestied (Wikipedia, 2012d)

Throughout this period, fertility rates continued to be much higher among America’s non-white minorities than in the majority White population. For whatever reason, Blacks and Hispanics were not participating in the economic and cultural changes that had reduced White fertility.

The other Obama revolution

The collapse of the Bush Boom led not only to the election of Barack Obama in 2008 but also to a sharp downturn in illegal immigration. Net illegal immigration may now be negative (Passel et al., 2012). Total immigration has fallen to levels unseen since the 1980s.

Non-White fertility has likewise fallen. Hispanic fertility in particular fell from a high of 2.86 children per woman in 2006 to 2.35 in 2010. The same period saw fertility declines in other population groups, with White Americans showing the smallest decline (Martin et al., 2012, see above chart). Preliminary data indicate that this convergence is continuing. In 2011, Hispanic fertility fell to the replacement level of 2.2:

[Fertility rates were] down 6 percent for Hispanic women and 2 percent for non-Hispanic black, whereas the rate for non-Hispanic white women was essentially unchanged. The GFR for AIAN [American Indian and Alaskan native] women was down 2 percent in 2011, whereas the rate for API [Asian and Pacific Islander] women rose 1 percent. The 2011 rates for non-Hispanic black and Hispanic women in 2011 were the lowest ever reported for the United States. (Hamilton et al., 2012)

If current trends continue, all of the major population groups will have fallen to about the same fertility rate by the time Obama leaves office. White Americans may even hold first place, their fertility being buoyed up by groups like the Mormons, the Amish, and the Hassidic Jews. Such a situation will be unprecedented in U.S. history.

One might object that these trends reflect the current hard times. True, but good times aren’t coming back any day soon. American economic growth will be sluggish for at least the next decade and any attempt to do better will abort spectacularly, like the end of the Bush Boom. Because the U.S. is now a mature economy, it can no longer grow at the rates we once saw during the postwar era and now see in many developing countries.

In addition, the decline in non-White fertility doesn’t seem to reflect only economic factors. Black American fertility was already falling during the 1990s and 2000s when economic conditions were much better, aside from a rise when Bush Jr. was pushing to expand minority home ownership. The same cultural factors that previously affected White fertility are now affecting all Americans, specifically a growing desire by women to marry later and limit their number of children.

What if a Republican had been in office?

Is this demographic reversal Obama’s doing? Would it have happened anyway? We can best answer these questions by asking what a Republican president would have done, like McCain in 2008 or Romney in 2012.

First, the level of legal immigration would have been raised—that was in Romney’s platform. Second, there would have been some sort of amnesty, not the same as Obama’s proposal but very similar number-wise. Some 12 million illegal immigrants would have become eligible for an “earned path to citizenship” and any children born on American soil would have automatically gained U.S. citizenship.

Third, there would have been efforts to spur another round of high economic growth through easy credit and deregulation, like the Bush Boom of the past decade.  Such a boom would have done little to raise the average worker’s wage, while doing a lot to spur another influx of low-wage labor for work in construction, agriculture, and services … to mow the lawns of the rich and to build them ever more monster homes.

Finally, a Republican president would have sought to limit access to abortion, perhaps even seeking to overturn Roe vs Wade. There would almost certainly have been a move to cut off Medicaid funding for abortion and birth control.

Conclusion

Regardless of what happens, White Americans are headed for minority status, but that process now promises to be longer and more drawn out than previously thought … thanks to the Obama presidency. Is this a case of his party naively acting against its own interests? Not really. Most Democrats aren’t “anti-White.” That’s a trope that certain dog-whistling Republicans are pushing. Most Democrats just want to see all Americans get the same deal—the same standard of living, the same quality of life, and the same freedom, including reproductive freedom.

Is that a naïve goal? Perhaps. But is it more naïve than the Republican goal of unlimited economic and demographic growth? If pre-2009 trends had continued, the U.S. population would have soared to almost half a billion by mid-century (Beck, 2010; Camarota, 2007).

Political choices aren’t always clear-cut. Yes, Romney is light-skinned, but that’s no guarantee that he cares about the future of White Americans. His interests coincide more with those of the corporate donors who keep the Republican Party afloat.  Yes, Obama is dark-skinned, but he may still be a better choice for White folks worried about their future.  To be sure, the Democratic Party is likewise influenced by corporate donors both directly and indirectly (via NPOs that are nonetheless corporate-funded), but it also has internal factions, like the union movement, that oppose the globalist project of outsourcing to low-wage countries and insourcing low-wage labor. Other factions, notably the environmentalists, are critical of unlimited growth. Finally, the different ethnic factions within the party don’t form a monolithic bloc; infighting will happen, and one faction or another will make appeals for support from White Americans.

Clearly, both parties leave much to be desired. In politics, however, one sometimes has to choose between the terrible and the less terrible. As White Americans descend to minority status, they will have to learn to live by their wits.

References

Anon. (2012). The USA’s Total Fertility Rates by Race, 1980 to 2010, Hail to you, October 7

http://hailtoyou.wordpress.com/2012/10/07/the-usas-total-fertility-rates-by-race-1980-to-2010/

Beck, R. (2010). Immigration by the numbers – off the charts,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muw22wTePqQ

Camarota, S.A. (2007). 100 million more projecting the impact of immigration on the U.S. population, 2007 to 2060, Centre for Immigration Studies

http://www.cis.org/articles/2007/back707.html

Coulter, A. (2012). Demography is destiny, Human Events, November 18, 2012

http://www.humanevents.com/2012/11/14/coulter-demography-is-destiny/

Hamilton, B.E., J.A. Martin, & S.J. Ventura. (2012).  Births: Preliminary Data for 2011, National Vital Statistics Reports, 61(5) October 3

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_05.pdf

Hill, L.E. (2002). Understanding the Future of Californians’ Fertility: The Role of Immigrants, Public Policy Institute of California, San Francisco

http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_402LHR.pdf

Martin, J.A., B.E. Hamilton, S.J. Ventura, M.J.K. Osterman, E.C. Wilson, & T.J. Mathews. (2012). Births: Final Data for 2010, National Vital Statistics Reports, 61(1) August

Passel, J., D. Cohn, & A. Gonzalez-Barrera. (2012). Net Migration from Mexico Falls to Zero—and Perhaps Less, Pew Hispanic Center, April 23

http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/04/23/net-migration-from-mexico-falls-to-zero-and-perhaps-less/

Wikipedia (2012a). Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965

Wikipedia (2012b). Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Reform_and_Control_Act_of_1986

Wikipedia (2012c). Immigration Act of 1990

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1990

Wikipedia (2012d). Illegal immigrant population of the United States

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigrant_population_of_the_United_States