One Particular Harbour
Thoughts about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness from Dave Darby.
All posts in Health
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Genetic Scapegoat Loose
Jun 13, 2010Posted by Dave Darby
Read more »O where o where has our little scapegoat gone, o where o where can it be?
For nearly ten years, I’ve been working to educate people on the importance and impact of their environment on not only their success but on their health. Even before the Human Genome Project, Americans were all too happy to pin the tail on some other donkey.
“My parents were obese – it’s in my family genes. It’s not my fault.”
“Well, it’s not like my family was ever good in school. We’re built for sports.”
“Well, it’s not like my family was ever good at sports. We’re built for science.”
“Farming is in my blood.”
And on and on and on.
Dolly Parton who, regardless of whether or not you like country music, is an amazing singer and musician, was on Larry King a few months ago. When Larry asked “Do you think musical talent is hereditary?”, Dolly who was and is usually light and airy, became very serious when she answered “Oh yes, I think it is. My family was always singing and playing music.”
Well that doesn’t make it hereditary or genetic. That’s still the environment teaching and those who are rewarded with praise (false or earned) will develop a passion for what they and others around them are doing – monkey see, monkey do. If you’ve seen Simon Cowell and American Idol, then you know that some genetically ‘un-gifted’ people believe they can sing despite the contrary, obnoxious evidence.
Now, this is all harmless fun. It doesn’t matter what you believe about musical talent and how it is obtained. But when it comes to health, Americans tend to believe the same way. And who could blame them – it is after all shoved down our throats by the AMA. They used to tell us – “We need to know about your family history – this is the greatest predictor of disease as diseases tend to be genetic.”
Then, here comes the Human Genome Project to save us. When it was announced 10 years ago, it was seen as the savior to all our ills. It would, after all, be expected to map out all of our genetic makeup (markers) and combined with data on diseases, illuminate us all as to which markers ‘created’ which diseases.
But as the New York Times pointed out yesterday – A Decade Later, Genetic Map Yields Few New Cures – it has failed to show anything conclusive after spending $3 Billion. Three Ba Ba Ba Billion.
For biologists, the genome has yielded one insightful surprise after another. But the primary goal of the $3 billion Human Genome Project — to ferret out the genetic roots of common diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s and then generate treatments — remains largely elusive. Indeed, after 10 years of effort, geneticists are almost back to square one in knowing where to look for the roots of common disease.
One sign of the genome’s limited use for medicine so far was a recent test of genetic predictions for heart disease. A medical team led by Nina P. Paynter of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston collected 101 genetic variants that had been statistically linked to heart disease in various genome-scanning studies. But the variants turned out to have no value in forecasting disease among 19,000 women who had been followed for 12 years.
The old-fashioned method of taking a family history was a better guide, Dr. Paynter reported this February in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
So, I just want to say it once again maybe this time a little LOUDER.
YOUR ENVIRONMENT IS KILLING YOU
The AMA wants you to believe that they hold the key, the golden chalice to all things medical. Yet, after $3 Billion, they have not been able to prove their conclusions.Here’s a thought and, hey, I’ll offer it up for free to save the taxpayers $3 Ba Ba Ba Billion. You SHOULD check your family history, but not because of the chance future disease is genetic, but BECAUSE you share the same environment. You eat the same food, you sleep in the same house with all of the same carcinogens entrapped by caulking and sealing yourself in (to save energy), you brush your teeth with the same chemicals, you walk on the same chemically-induced lawn and you breathe the same polluted air.
When there is a salmonella outbreak, let me ask you this, do medical ‘professionals’ run around checking family history or do they run around trying to find everyone who ate the same thing? They try to find everyone who ate the same thing – go figure.
Four years ago when we sold our house and moved away from the midwest and venture south, we learned something disturbing. For the entire 8 years of living in our cush house in a cush golf-course community we just happened to be trapping too much Radon in our home. So much so that we had to install a special basement to roof vent/blower system to make the house safe for the new owners. THE NEW OWNER’S??? Not to sound insensitive, I care about the new owners, but what about US?
Here are some tasty facts about Radon:
- It is a radioactive, colorless, odorless, tasteless noble gas, occurring naturally as the decay product of radium. It is one of the densest substances that remains a gas under normal conditions and is considered to be a health hazard due to its radioactivity. NICE
- According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, radon is the second most frequent cause of lung cancer, after cigarette smoking. NICE
Wow. Now if I were to develop lung cancer one day, some idiot from the AMA might well conclude that it was because of all of the smoking I was exposed to as a kid as my parents were pretty heavy smokers and that I was genetically prone to lung cancer. And then if my kids get it, well, simple – it’s genetic, runs in the family.
Then again Waldos, it might just be that no matter my genetic markers, Radon is bad. And it might just be that my environment as a kid and as an adult living for 8 years in a Radon trap had a little something to say about my future health.
So we moved to change our environment to a more satisfying, more productive place for us. We didn’t feel healthy emotionally or physically where we were. So we moved. We had control over our environment and we took the reigns to make things better.
I encourage you to do the same. Take the reigns back in your life and stop looking for the genetic scapegoat that ‘proves’ things are beyond your control.
OR – you can listen to the AMA and your physicians if you feel compelled to with the logic that their training, their profession’s commitment to continued studies/trials/education and societal pressures all dictate that we don’t question authorities/professionals.
Go ahead, it’s your life.
For me and my family, hell, I’m going to use my eyes and react to tangible data. A clinical trial of 982 sample patients means Donkey Kong to me. If clinical trials were reliable and pharmaceutical companies were not selling us a load of manure to make profits and please shareholders, we’d still be buying Vioxx.
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Soap and Water Still Works
Jan 26, 2009Posted by Dave Darby
Read more »When is progress a setback? What are acceptable risks? What price are we paying for our obsession with laziness and speed?
A commercial today might as well read like this:
“No time on your hands? Tired of your clogged sink? NO PROBLEM. Pour this highly toxic chemical in your drain and let it sit for 10 minutes. This not only eats away grungy hair, but it releases harmful toxins that may likely send you into shock or give you unexplainable cancer one day. But, HEY, this is TODAY! And today, you don’t have time for such petty concerns. Give us 10 years of the end of your life and we’ll save you 15 minutes every 4 months – GUARANTEED or your money back.”
Several years ago, we broke free and took a stand. No more chemical cleaners in the house. Well, not 100% gone, but probably 95.4% gone.
We still keep chlorine bleach but we also alternate with hydrogen peroxide bleach. We keep window cleaner but we water it down in a separate bottle. And we don’t spray for bugs so much to my wife’s chagrin, we occasionally have ants.
What’s the big deal I say? Ants aren’t so bad. In fact, we homeschool and I think having ants fulfills a biology credit. Those little suckers are amazing to watch!
Plus, it’s pretty simple. No food crumbs left behind - no ants. No matter how clean we are, with 5 kids, we’re going to get a few ants from time to time. What I don’t want is those suckers tracking in pesticide for our 2 year hold to be handling. And trust me, this girl will and does handle them. It is not uncommon at all for her to walk into the room holding a prize by the legs proclaiming -“pider!”
By the way, fear is a learned behavior, but that’s for another day.
So, the lesson is this: we have more access to both medical knowledge and care than any other time in history. Yet cancer rates continue to rise. Why?
YEAR NEW CASES DEATHS*
2002 1,284,900 555,500
2004 1,368,030 563,700
2006 1,399,790 564,830
2008 1,437,180 565,650*from the American Cancer Society
At what point do we realize that cancer just might be a poor-man’s or rushed-man’s disease? At what point do we realize that feeding and caring for massive population growth requires preservatives and toxins that just might - oh my what a coincidence - curb population growth?
From a big picture, macro level (i.e. Government), it makes sense to have acceptable levels of death by toxins, cancers et al. After all, it is a strain on our global economic systems to have population booms, unemployment and poverty. What would it be like if 2.5 million people didn’t die each year in the US alone?
But nobody lives on the macro level. Nobody want’s cancer nor do they want it for their loved ones. So here’s an example of how we ‘survive’ by not playing the macro, mainstream advertising game and by living without chemicals in the house.
About 2 weeks ago, I grabbed a bucket and a few old towels and hit all 3 bathroom sinks. It’s this simple, removed the drain trap (ample info on Google), stuffed a rag in the pipe coming out of the wall to keep fumes out, then I took the parts to a working sink and cleaned out the trap. The main bathroom sink was the worst so I started there - I always like to do the hardest job first. Oh by the way, It’s also a good idea to do this 2 hours before or after a meal.
I use an old bottle washer to clean out both the trap and the pipe down through the sink – just remove the stopper and swab away. Put it all back together, run water and test for leaks then the real test – pull the stopper, fill the sink with water the pull. Ahhhh, record time. That’s how a drain should work.
No expensive chemicals. No harmful toxins released in our house. It wasn’t the most apetizing thing I’ve seen, but who cares? For 3-4 months, our drains will work perfectly.
See? Soap and water still works.
Save yourself and your kids – get rid of those chemicals. It’s a great way to teach kids how sinks work and hey, in these (or any) economic times, it’s a great way to grow your net worth.
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My Wife Just Passed Out
Jul 8, 2008Posted by Dave Darby
Read more »Sex gets better with age, study says 70-year-olds said they get it on now more than they did 30 years ago.
Two interesting things stand out about this.
First, my poor wife. Every time I see those Viagra commercials I always have to laugh when they state ‘If you have an erection for more than 4 hours, seek immediate medical attention.’ Seriously, if I’m saluting for 4 hours, me thinks my wife will need medical attention more than me Popeye. And if more 70-year olds are putting notches in the bed post, I’m thinking men may start catching up to women in life expectancy – for two reasons, surely you can figure those out.
Secondly, we live in a mostly retired, mostly elderly area in Florida. The part where Ferraris come with matching strollers complete with logos on the handle bars. Now for the next few weeks when I see my elderly friends, I will have to think twice about why they grin so much. And I thought it was because they know we have 5 kids – none of which have been teenagers yet. Now I know.
Oh, and like it or not Mom, you’re closing in on this population segment. Disgusting.
