November 19, 2007--DNA Me

I recently learned that if you have a thousand bucks to spare and are willing to spit in a cup, there are a growing number of companies out there that will analyze your saliva in order to chart your very own DNA. From the results you will be able to learn important things about your susceptibility to heart disease, Alzheimer’s, breast cancer, and Type 2 diabetes.

You can also learn about your genetic ancestry—of what racial mix are you composed. For some, acquiring this latter information has come as quite a surprise—former members of slave-owning families have learned that that though they are as white looking as say Thomas Jefferson they are in reality 20 percent African. Somewhere back then great-great granddaddy must have been fooling around in the slave quarters.

And you can find out why those Thanksgiving brussels sprout don’t appeal to you—one part of your DNA may reveal that to you all vegetable taste a little bitter—and you might learn why as a child you hated it when your mother tried to get you to drink your milk—you may have a genetic tendency to not easily digest dairy products. (See linked NY Times article.)

More controversially, it is claimed that your DNA patterns might show a tendency to higher (or lower) IQ. If true, this is one step away from looking to see if there are racial differences that might be inborn. Or for that matter, DNA IQ-related patterns that differentiate males from females.

I think I’ll take a pass on these and focus more on tendencies toward certain diseases (though do I really want to know if I’m prone to Alzheimer’s when there is at the moment nothing to do with that information except be depressed all the time) and personality traits.

For that matter, what if I learn that I have a tendency toward early rising (this I already know), a propensity to put on weight because I am drawn against my will to fatty foods, or that I’ve inherited the gene that produces wet earwax? This too I’m plagued with and am hoping that this new genomic knowledge will lead to some celebrity stepping forward to get behind fundraising efforts in support of the Earwax Association Research Society—EARS being their acronym--because I'm getting sick and tired of all that wax build-up and overflow.