For those interested, the article below is a study on what happened to the inhabitants of the nearby island Little Andaman after it was settled by mainlanders. Infant mortality rose (to 40%), malnutrition and disease increased, and life expectancy, even excluding infant mortality, was approx 35 yr.

http://www.culturalsurvival.org/ourpublications/csq/article/...

"I would assume they have a better quality of life than the majority of the planet"

I'd agree with you that they probably have a more enjoyable day to day experience, however I also would bet that they have an infant mortality rate that is astronomical even by 3rd world standards. And that they have an average life expectancy which isn't hard to beat in the 3rd world. I'm not saying that these 2 things justify us forcing contact with them, just that it is hard for someone to justify that lower infant mortality and higher life expectancy are always positive things for our species to strive for. Its not just an issue of culture.

The United States is 35th in infant mortality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mor...) - and the US is 33rd in life expectancy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expec...). You just said you didn't know their two statistics in those categories, but a hunch may be enough to go in and shake things up for them.

Of course, many other countries cook the infant mortality books be not reporting premature babies that die shortly after birth or are "hopeless" because they don't have the medical tech that the US does. Consequently, that skews US life expectancy down.

All I'm saying is that the US isn't all sunshine and daisies. There are a TON of poor areas (rural and urban alike) where it's just not safe to live, kids don't get enough mental and physical nourishment, and there's a good chance you'll die before high school. That sucks. And that's a problem that should be fixed. As a US citizen, I care infinitely more about fixing these problems before trying to contact and civilize the inhabitants of some remote island.

As bad as the US is in those statistics, you'd expect this island to be 5 - 20 times worse looking at the range of third world countries on the list.

A lot of the infant mortality in the 3rd world is due to infectious disease or conditions like diarrhea. These are diseases common in crowded unsanitary places accompanied by poor nutrition.

It would be mistaken, therefore, to assume that the same conditions would prevail in isolated places like North Sentinel Island, where the people are apparently well nourished. So the infant mortality rate there may be above the best found elsewhere, but it is probably lower than many other places.

Excellent point.

Is ~400 people a large enough population to support most diseases, or is it possible that they essentially (infectious) disease free by virtue of their tiny population?

I'm also curious what the genetics of a 400-person island look like. I always assumed that the minimum viable population was larger than that -- somewhere in the thousands -- but if the population estimate is correct, and has been for tens of thousands of years, then that's pretty concrete evidence that it's no more than 400.

A small isolated population like that will be free of most infectious diseases. The number of Sentinelese isn't known, but may be as low as 100, since the Sentinelese, Great Andamanese, and Onge,(i.e. those on the island in question as well as the neighboring islands) have "a combined population of 400–500 individuals." [2].

Several studies, two on the genetics of the Andamanese [1,2] and the other on their linguistics [3] suggest that they have been isolated for 50-70,000 yr. The genetics studies also showed a very low population diversity, so in common parlance they are "inbred". Oddly enough, if they have been isolated for long enough, they will therefore be free of most genetic diseases, since the rare ones will be manifested early on in their isolation due to inbreeding, and then selected against. Genetic conditions that don't affect reproductive fitness could be common, though. Genetic isolation can also result in increased susceptibility to pathogens later introduced from outside said population.

[1]Kashyap, V. K., et al. "Molecular relatedness of the aboriginal groups of Andaman and Nicobar Islands with similar ethnic populations." International Journal of Human Genetics 3 (2003): 5-11.

[2] Thangaraj, Kumarasamy, et al. "Genetic affinities of the Andaman Islanders, a vanishing human population." Current Biology 13.2 (2003): 86-93.

[3]Abbi, Anvita. "Is Great Andamanese genealogically and typologically distinct from Onge and Jarawa?." Language Sciences 31.6 (2009): 791-812.

for all we know, they view infant mortality as a perfectly acceptable form of birth control. this would be an example of culture shock.