I was reading Obama´s health care plan and the
creation of a databank:
Mr. Obama announced last month that his new budget
included $215 million toward the
creation of a national databank of medical information, intended to associate specific gene patterns with various diseases and to predict what genetic, lifestyle and
environmental factors correlate with successful treatment. Once all those
relationships are clarified, the path will open to drugs or other interventions
that firm up the good links and interrupt the bad ones.
Skeptics point out that genetic medicine, for all its
promise, has delivered relatively few clinical benefits. And straightforward analyses of lifestyle and
environment effects on health may occasionally lead to clear-cut advice (don’t
smoke), but more often sow confusion, as anyone curious about the best way to
lose weight or the optimal quantity of dietary salt knows… Barbara has obvious
genetic predispositions, like most patients, but not inherited diseases like
cystic fibrosis or genetic signatures on tumor cells. Those alcoholism genes
are unquestionably going to turn out to be subtle troublemakers, the kind that
nudge people in the wrong direction, raising risk but not sealing doom.
The relationship between medical problems like the one
of Barbara and triathlon performance are quite similar. We have seen this phenomenon with the kids
that left the team:
Which chapter came first? Was it the genetic
predilection for alcohol that created her lifestyle (pure chaos) and
environment (streets, shelters, hotels)? Or did the story start at another
point in the cycle, with alcohol selected as a comforting longtime companion,
then taking over?... Either way, Barbara’s medical problems are predictable
spokes on the wheel: bad heart, terrible liver, crumbling hips, gummed up
lungs, AIDS from a brief foray into injectable drugs.
Talent identification for triathlon has to do more with lifestyle
and environment than genetics, as we have mentioned multiple times in this
blog. But, are the environmental and
lifestyle teachable? We come back to
same problem: EDUCATION. We struggle to
teach a healthy lifestyle and the environment we live in sucks. Obama is fighting the ultimate fight already
with a handicap:
Furthermore, the influence of Barbara’s lifestyle and
environment on her medical conditions doesn’t require a giant database or a
powerful computer to interpret. Mr. Obama’s data crunching and Barbara’s own
analysis are bound to concur: “Gotta find a place to live, gotta make new
friends, gotta take my meds.”
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