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Researchers Discover the First 'Heart Attack' Gene
jimi1283 writes "A group of researchers recently conducted a study on 100 members of a family that had a high percentage of heart attack and other coronary disease. The study lead to the discovery of the gene responsible."
Ethics and public policty really can't handle this type of knowledge on who can get what disease after exposure to common environmental factors or habits. Current health policy standards and EPA guidelines assume that "all people are created equal." Thus, the EPA sets carcinogen levels to create a less than one-in-a-million chance of getting cancer. But what happens now that we know that we are not all created equal -- instead of everyone having a one-in-a-million chance, we have 999,999 people with no chance of cancer and 1 genetically identifiable person per million with a 100% chance of cancer.
The existence of distinct genetic susceptabilities to high-fat foods, smoking, carcinogens, medications, etc. makes it hard to create uniform regulations for food, medicine, and occupational conditions.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
DNA testing is required to get a job, health insurance, etc....
Gattaca isn't far away...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
From the first post, I assume we are referring to sucrose but not the more commonly occurring sugars like glucose, fructose (the major sugar in most fruits - to the troll), lactose, etc. Sucrose does not occur in large concentrations in nature except in a few specific cases - sugar beets, sugar cane, etc. From a bio-historical perspective it is quite obvious that we are not well adapted to eating large amounts of purified sucrose.
If you would like further information on some of the sugars and the differences between them you could have a look here.
What astounds me about the american diet is the amount of sugar that is in EVERYTHING! Even your bread has huge amounts of sugar in it. If I had to eat something sweet in the morning (as seems traditional in a number of countries) I would blow chunks all over the place - salty, fatty, plain, whatever just don't coat it in bloody sugar!
Avoid prepackaged foods and don't cover your food in sugar is the long and the short of it. Buy a bread maker, read labels (usually the ingredients are ordered in terms of weight - so the KFC coleslaw where the ingredients start "cabbage, sugar, carrots..." lets you know that the second largest ingredient is sugar... ack)
Btw, I would not reccomend that anyone eats refined (white) sugar. The processes used in it's manufacture are not what I would like to ingest - raw sugar is far preferable (I still like a bit in my tea:).
While I am meandering from topic to topic - I would reccomend that anyone who uses artificial sweetners tries this experiment. Find an ant's nest, place a unit of of your preferred artificial sweetner next to it, and see what the ants do. If it ain't good enough for ants, it ain't good enough for me.
Ok, one final ramble to the parents out there - be good with your kids. It seems a lot of the attitudes towards sweeteners and sugar content in food is very hard to "un-learn" once taught. I am trying my best to make sure that my son isn't imprinted with too many bad eating habits. This is not to say that they cannot enjoy sweets, but they are not and should not be part of a day-to-day diet. My little boy loves his fruit, and would take a good nectarine over a lollypop anyday.
Q. (Waxing Lyrical)
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