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Cold Spot of IDDM Incidence in Europe: Macedonia

Kocova M, Trucco M, Konstantinova M, Dorman JS Diabetes Care 1993; 16: 1236-1240.

It is truly unfortunate that Kocova et al have attempted to use a scientific journal as a forum to promote myths rather than objective facts. Kocova's assertion that Macedonians are

"people of Slavic origin with a unique linguistic, ethnic, historical, and cultural background"is at complete variance with the unbiased historic record. Consider that one of the most respected anthropological texts on this general subject, "The Races of Europe" by Professor Carleton Coon [1], which amazingly Kocova even references, although it makes absolutely no mention of any "unique" Macedonian ethnic group, and only refers to the people of that region as Bulgarian. The renowned historian John VA Fine Jr [2] unequivocally states.

".. the reader should ignore references to ethnic Macedonians in the Middle Ages which appear in some modern works"No doubt he had the type of publications Kocova et al referenced in mind. Until the late 1940s Macedonia was a geographic region where the majority of the indigenous people expressed a Bulgarian national consciousness. There is a complete predominance of articles and texts written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to support this view, even within scientific journals.

Accordingly by Kocova's inability to correctly define the lineage of today's "Macedonian" people she promotes an inaccurate notion by suggesting that the "genetic background of the Macedonian population" may be a factor in the incidence of type 1 diabetes. The implied corollary to her argument, that the population in neighbouring Bulgaria and northern Greece are genetically different, is patently false. In fact the generalized validity of the findings reported would await similar studies in the populations mentioned. Today we know some two million "Macedonians" and their descendents who had to flee Vardar and Aegean Macedonia at various times during this century live in Bulgaria. In closing I might ask Dr Kocova what has happened to the "ethnic" Moldavians in the former USSR? It is quite amazing how they transformed into "ethnic" Roumanians overnight.

References

Coon CS: The Races of Europe. New York, MacMillan, 1939.
Fine Jr JVA: The Early Medieval Balkans. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, p37, 1983
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