One Particular Harbour
Thoughts about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness from Dave Darby.
All posts in Sociology
-
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.
-
John McCain – Wrong Again Sir
May 5, 2010Posted by Dave Darby
Read more »Bending the laws – I’m sorry, this is bad for criminals but most certainly bad for politicians.
Here’s a quick story. A middle-aged man, fresh from drowning his troubles gets behind the wheel of his SUV. There were warning signs that those around him missed. His wife who considered his drinking a bothersome, but untouchable vice. The bartender who served this man drinks night after night knowing that he left the bar impaired but after so many nights, apparently not bad enough to cause any trouble. The liquor store clerk who week after week watched as this already inebriated man comes in for his home stash just before entering the lion’s den.
But one night, something changed. That bus of kids coming home from camp late at night was not usually there. In fact, there was NEVER anybody at this annoying red-flashing light. So he does what he normally does – blows through it. But on this fatal night, he doesn’t make it.
The drunk driver’s t-bone was enough to kill 3 kids on impact, but the worst of the accident was when his SUV drove the bus into oncoming traffic in which a semi-truck cut straight down the middle of the school bus leaving all but 1 dead. The lone survivor was the drunk driver whose SUV was peeled off the bus by the semi-truck and sent into a wild spin in which the SUV landed safely in a ditch. That driver, in fact, would climb out of his SUV unscathed and disoriented by the spin, having no idea what even happened as he could not make sense of the wreckage and smoke 300 yards away. There are no screams left to hear. All he sees is the badly damaged front-end of his SUV buried in a ditch. So he starts walking the last 1/2 mile home alone in his continued troubles.
In his wake, 24 kids, a retired bus driver and a semi-truck driving father of 3 all lost their lives because there was never enough alcohol to drown one man’s troubles. And when the police trace the vehicle later that night and show up to arrest him, his wife has disbelief, but not surprise in her pained eyes. When this drunk is awakened, the first thing the officer in charge does is READ HIM HIS RIGHTS.
You see John McCain, whether born here or naturalized, a citizen of the United States has unalienable rights. And while it’s tempting to play to national fears about terrorism, you continue, as George W. Bush did, to walk along the slippery slope.
Government must NOT overstep our unalienable rights – good, bad or indifferent. And I quote from Thomas Jefferson – ‘A government big enough to supply you with everything you need, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.’
You see, fear and terrorism tactics have worked in this country since perfected during the cold-war with Russia in which traveling salesmen did their best to put unnecessary bomb shelters in the back yards of Main Street USA. And they justified their parasitic income and lives as a national duty. In fact, more people will die EACH YEAR because of tobacco sales, car sales, alcohol sales, firearms sales and, let us not forget, medical malpractice and pharmaceuticals than would ever die in a crowded New York City car bomb attack. But you and your lobbyist bedfellows will work tirelessly to promote your agenda and work to market and teach and manipulate Americans to believe that these all too common domestic/corporate deaths are part of life, while the rare terrorist deaths are outrageous and require reshaping our Constitution. You are wrong.
And the worst part? Is that every election cycle, you come begging to our doors, our televisions and our emails for more money to keep selling us this fear. The fear we should have is of people like you who pander to the lowest common denominator in us all in hopes to maintain your lifestyle and the fear of people – like you – who prey on our collectively short memories.
Well, I don’t forget my history, not the history of this great nation, and certainly not the history of man in which there always has been and always will be strife, poverty and pain. Nor will I forget those that will ignore the real threats and propagate the false. For those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it.
So go on, you non-Maverick you, tuck your tail between your legs and after you lose your upcoming election, go bunk up with W. and start touring the country with hate and fear-riddled speeches. The rest of us are moving on – moving on to fight terrorism where needed, moving on to get our economy back on track and moving on to trying to protect ourselves from the enemies from within who surround us in the form of politicians, Wall Street executives, the hospital/insurance/pharmaceutical triad and lets not forget those OTHER lowly, cowards who ALSO take from unsuspecting families, parents and spouses what is not theirs to take – drunken drivers.
This low-life group, along with domestic, nationalized terrorists should be read their Miranda Rights. Then, after a public trial by their peers, if found guilty, they should all be brought to a very public execution in which we place the fear where it should be. The fear that any greedy, ignorant bastard who puts himself above the law or above society will pay the consequences of justice as created and guaranteed under our Constitution.
-
A New Dawn in America
Jan 20, 2009Posted by Dave Darby
Read more »We’ve been through 5 pregnancies and 5 births and never did it get old. Not once did it seem routine. Nor was the significance ever lost.
Today with the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States of America - I feel the same.
It is a time of renewal. A time for broken barriers. A time for hope. And as our new President outlined in his campaign, as his time as President-Elect and in his inaugural address, it is a time for discipline, reflection and time to roll up our sleeves and get to work.
We have a country to repair. We have legacies to rebuild. We have relationships to renew.
Today is a great day. It will be more significant than any of us realize.
