Con: All dwellers at high altitude are persons of impaired physical and mental powers: the view from the Himalayas.

At the outset, I wish to emphasize that I do not think that Barcroft was a racist. The statement (All dwellers at high altitude are persons of impaired physical and mental powers) was based on scientific work that he and his team performed in Cerro de Pasco in 1921–1922, and earlier on Monte Rosa and in Tenerife, as well as the work of other scientists. It was empirical work (Barcroft, 1925) with flawed conclusions. Barcroft may have been a smart scientist, but clearly he lacked street smarts. He should have learnt from the canny Jesuits (who came to the Peruvian Andes several centuries before him), such as Father Acosta who was the first to document the possible mechanism of acute mountain sickness in the sixteen hundreds. The Jesuits did not make reckless statements like Barcroft. (Incidentally, the name Jesuit is derived from one given to intrigue and equivocation). I am not suggesting that Barcroft should have been ‘‘Jesuitical,’’ but he certainly should have minded his words. Barcroft was a leading high altitude physiologist of his day, who worked extensively on the hemoglobin oxygen dissociation curve. Barcroft challenged Haldane who maintained till the end that oxygen is secreted into the lungs; but, contrary to such achievements like correctly challenging Haldane, his appreciation of certain aspects of the physiology of man at high altitude was clearly deficient. Even if he incorrectly assessed that the South American man was lacking in mental and physical abilities, Barcroft’s knowledge of geography seems to be limited. In making that statement (all dwellers at high altitude—), he ignored the people living in the Tibetan plateau. As a true scientist, he should have abstained from making sweeping statements when he did not have all the evidence. Perhaps if he had read a bestseller of his time ( James Hilton’s The Lost Horizon, published in 1933), which details the life of Hugh Conway after a plane crash in the Himalayas, Barcroft could have had a re-think of his earlier statements. In that story, living in a magnificent location at high altitude makes you energetic and young forever (hence the term Shangri la or earthly paradise, which is derived from the book). Hardly the environment that would breed mentally or physically challenged people. Granted, the story is fictitious, but it is powerful. The book was made into a popular movie in 1937 by Frank Capra. Perhaps Barcroft should have seen that movie if he was not given to reading for fun. However I digress too much; now for some anecdotal evidence before more concrete proof will be presented. The Sherpa people, who have a Tibetan ancestry, are some of the smartest people I know. For example, Dr. Sanduk Ruit, the world renowned ophthalmologist, has revolutionized eye surgery in Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, Mongolia, Burma, and so forth. Just ask the Harvard-educated Dr. Geoff Tabin from the University of Utah who works closely with Ruit. Geoff is in absolute awe of the eye surgery skills that Sanduk possesses. In addition, the present Director of Health Services in Nepal is Dr. Mingma Sherpa. He is in charge of all health-related government activities in Nepal. For decades he looked after the hospital in Phaplu in the Everest region. Both of these people were born and bred at high altitude and clearly contradict Barcroft’s assessment of highlanders. Many other examples abound. Finally, to more concrete evidence to disprove Barcroft’s illconceived statements. In an article entitled, ‘‘Are Himalayan Sherpas better protected against brain damage associated with extreme altitude climbs’’? published by Garrido et al. in 1996, they compared seven well-known Sherpa climbers that lived in high altitude with 21 lowland elite high altitude climbers. They found that, while all the lowland climbers presented psychoneurological symptoms during or after the expedition and 13 (61%) showed magnetic resonance abnormalities (mild cortical atrophy and/or periventricular high intensity signal areas in the white matter), only one Sherpa (14%) showed similar changes on the scan. The significant differences in both clinical and neuroimaging findings would seem to suggest that Sherpa highlanders have better brain protection even when exposed to extreme altitude, much higher than their areas of residence (around 3000 to 4000 m). (Of course there were no scans during Barcroft’s time, so it is hard to fault him for not carrying out these tests). But we can say that he did speak out prematurely. The next evidence I have is the unpublished article by Beall, Fagan, and Goldstein based on a test that measured cognitive function in Tibetan nomads. Joe Fagan is a psychologist wellknown for developing the Fagan Test for Infantile Intelligence that is now extended for use across the lifespan. It measures