The slavery hypothesis135 is a final example of the misuse of genetics in contemporary health disparities research. Using a model of genetic determinism, it argues that the elevated rates of hypertension for blacks compared to whites in the U.S. are due to the selection of a genetic trait that occurred during the capture of slaves in Africa and their journey to the New World. African American hypertension is viewed as a response to sodium due to the selective effects of heat stress, salt and water deprivation during the transport of African slaves that created a genetic bottleneck of black people in the U.S. with distinctive genetic traits. A critical review of this hypothesis shows that it is inconsistent with the processes of population genetics, historical data on the scarcity of salt in Africa and on the level of mortality during the slave trade as well as on the proportion of mortality attributed to diarrhea.136
