Infectious Diseases as Selective Agents

An appraisal of the best known erythrocytic genetic adaptations of man to malaria and its implications

“…Therefore it seemed likely that this theory would have remained indefinitely in a sort of limbo in spite of being so brilliant, ingenious and conceptually gratifying, had it not been for the later discovery of other 'malarial' genes less reluctant to make Haldane's theory testable in a less indirect fashion (for exhaustive, though old, reviews on the classical "malarial" genes see Livingstone, 1967;Luzzatto, 1979;Montalenti, 1965).…”