RussellMc wrote:

> This paper is interesting and thought provoking in its claims - even
> though it's probably essentially wrong [tm] *.
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> http://www.bioscienceresource.org/commentaries/article.php?id=3D46
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> http://www.diabetesincontrol.com/index.php?option=3Dcom_content&view=3Dar=
ticle&id=3D10184&catid=3D1&Itemid=3D17
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> Fighting words:=20
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> " As the analysis also points out, the findings resolve the biggest
> conundrum in human health. The epidemiological data have always
> indicated that Western diseases are determined overwhelmingly by diet
> and other non-genetic factors. Similarly, clinical data have
> frequently shown that many diseases can be reversed or accelerated by
> diet and other lifestyle choices. The crucial importance of the new
> genomic findings is therefore to show that genetic research does not
> after all contradict these environmental explanations of disease.
> Rather, it now very strongly supports them."=20
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> Study by: Jonathan Latham, PhD, is Executive Director of The
> Bioscience Resource Project. Allison Wilson, PhD, is the Science
> Director and co-founder of the Bioscience Resource Project.=20
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> I realise that it's rash for an educated but not overly informed
> layman to rail against such obviously confident statementsby so
> eminently qualified researchers.  I have no hesitation in doing so.
> (Fools rush in ...). We'll see :-).
> ...
> Consider: Is it "plausible", based on your knowledge  of human
> knowledge, that all major heart disease does not have a genetic
> component?=20

I'd say it's possible, but not quite relevant. The major problem with
this look at medicine is that you're looking at statistics, and try to
apply this to /one/ sample. This doesn't work; statistics is always
about large numbers of samples and it makes no prediction whatsoever
about a single sample. (Probabilities are not predictions about the
behavior of a single sample, they are predictions about the behavior of
a large number of samples.)

As of now, we can't change our genetics (and I don't anticipate that we
can actually improve it so soon -- not in my lifetime :). So what we can
change are the other factors, and that's why they are simply so much
more important. I know from own experience how drastic the effects can
be.

And that goes far beyond diets... for example, in order to not be tense,
we have to relax not only our body, but also our mind and our emotions.=20


> For me, with a family history 4 out of 4 of severe heart disease a
> generation back on one side, and 1/1 2 back, that would be good news.
> For the many people for whom "cancer of some sort or other runs in
> the family" it would be equally good news.=20

I don't know whether this is good news. It's certainly old news that
many diseases have a behavioral component, but this doesn't help much,
so far. Changing deeply rooted behavior patters seems to be one of the
more difficult tasks; certainly more challenging than popping a few
pills or undergo some treatment. In many such cases (at least from the
for the general public insignificant number of samples I know), the
affected had quite a number of habits that are long deemed dangerous,
plus a few that I deem related and just as dangerous but that are often
not considered by business medicine. Even in the light of the danger
they just didn't think it would be worth it to change their habits. They
may have had a point, though...=20


> The reality is that a major proportion of all these are clearly [tm]
> genetically biased from a layman's perspective.=20

Not from this layman's perspective. There are probably more arguments to
be found, but I'll bring just two... :)

Just because something happens in people related to each other doesn't
mean that it has a genetic component. There may be shared behavioral
patters. These are as complex as genetics (meaning more complex in their
interactions than we can grasp at this point), so we can't quite discard
this possibility -- and maybe it could just as well explain some of
those clusters.

The other is the complexity of genetics and the insufficiency of
reducing it to simple rules. While it may be that /statistically/ there
may be a /correlation/ between certain gene configurations and certain
diseases, this doesn't tell us much. It doesn't tell us whether there is
a causal relationship, it doesn't tell us whether changing that genetic
sequence will actually prevent the disease, and worst of all, it doesn't
tell us what else such a change would cause in all the possible
combinations of other genes. I don't think there is much that is "clear"
here... besides maybe some correlations. What they mean, OTOH, doesn't
seem to be clear at all.

Gerhard
--=20
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