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Give Your Child the Gift of an Alzheimer's Diagnosis
theodp writes "'There's a lot you can do for your child with 99 dollars,' explains Fast Company's Elizabeth Murphy, who opted to get her adopted 5-year-old daughter's genes tested by 23andMe, a startup founded by Anne Wojcicki that's been funded to the tune of $126 million by Google, Sergey Brin (Wojcicki's now-separated spouse), Yuri Milner, and others. So, how'd that work out? 'My daughter,' writes Murphy, 'who is learning to read and tie her shoes, has two copies of the APOE-4 variant, the strongest genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's. According to her 23andMe results, she has a 55% chance of contracting the disease between the ages of 65 and 79.' So, what is 23andMe's advice for the worried Mom? 'You have this potential now to engage her in all kinds of activities,' said Wojcicki. 'Do you get her focused on her exercise and what she's eating, and doing brain games and more math?' Duke associate professor of public policy Don Taylor had more comforting advice for Murphy. 'It's possible the best thing you can do is burn that damn report and never think of it again,' he said. 'I'm just talking now as a parent. Do not wreck yourself about your 5-year-old getting Alzheimer's. Worry more about the fact that when she's a teenager she might be driving around in cars with drunk boys.'"
My father has Parkinson's and particpated in the 23andMe study. He has one of the two markers that 23andMe knows about. I happen to have none.
If I knew that I have a high chance of contracting Parkinson's it would change the way I live my life immediately. Instead of waiting until near retirement to travel the world, I'd live out of a suitcase and do it now. I've seen what Parkinson's does to people without the luxury of having endless amounts of money to spend on treatments. It turns you into a giant infant.
Let's say the genetic test instead reported that the kid was at high risk of skin cancer. No one would argue that that's not useful information--give greater emphasis to teaching the kid to use sunscreen and avoid tanning salons. I'm not up on what the current research says are ways of delaying / combating the onset of Alzheimer's, but if such methods exist and can be started early, why wouldn't you make use of the information. Yes, there are a lot of other ways to be killed or debilitated in sixty years of life, and in sixty years, we may well have a cure, but more information is never (okay fine, rarely?) a bad thing.
Another good use of the information in this report: enroll the kid in some longitudinal studies on the progression of Alzheimer's, if such things exist and look for children that young.
The gift to my kid would be for me to get the test, never tell a soul about it, and make plans to deal with Alzheimer's if I'm going to get it.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
You wouldn't change the way you live if you knew your expiration date? I certainly would. My wife and I try to save as much as we can because we have to assume that we will live to 80 or 90. If I took a blood test that said I was dead by 55, that's hundreds of thousands of dollars that I'd spend doing something else.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If it's important for you to travel the world before you die, then do it right away even if you *don't* have the markers for some degenerative genetic disease. See to your priorities as soon as is humanly possible, at least until they develop a test that tells whether you'll be hit by a bus on your 50th birthday.
The advice "carpe diem" ("seize the day") is as good now as it was 2000 years ago when Horace wrote those words:
You should not ask it, it is wrong to know impious things, what end the
gods will have given to me, to you, O Leuconoe, and do not try
Babylonian calculations [i.e., astrology]. How much better it is to endure whatever will be,
whether Jupiter has allotted to you more winters or [whether this one is] the last,
which now weakens upon the opposed rocks of the Tyrrhenian
Sea: may you be wise, strain your wines [i.e., prepare it for immediate drinking], and because of short life
prune long anticipation. While we are speaking, envious life
will have fled:seize the day, trusting the future as little as possible.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It's not about scaring your kid for 65 years. It's about having 65 years of warning. Perhaps just a nudge in the right direction now, like a focus on cognitive endeavors rather than keeping up on the latest Disney drivel, can encourage a life of improvement to the brain. When Alzheimers' does come around, there's ample cognitive ability to spare, so the gradual decline toward incapability might just outlast your kid's life.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I agree with latter-quoted guy: there's a HUGE business out of exploiting the (natural) fears of new parents. I have 4 kids, and our level of paranoia on the first one was crazy.
The idea that you need to drop $100 to see if there's any likelihood that your kid will eventually contract Alzheimers is ludicrous.
- there's no certainty about these numbers, it's about as reliable as the weather
- even if they WERE reliable, there's no firm understanding of genetic vs environmental factors
- and even if there was a firm understanding, there are no developed therapies/routines that are known to have ANY impact on long term development of the condition.
This is just marketing FUD to paranoid parents. BELIEVE ME, you're going to have about a million other far more immediate concerns getting your kids to the point where they move out on their own, and thereafter.
Personally, I'd be flipping delighted if someone could guarantee to me that my kids will live long enough for Alzheimers to be of the faintest relevance. Seriously.
-Styopa
Do you really need to know your child is at risk of Alzheimer's before you decide to teach them healthy habits and encourage brain activity?
Then newsflash: you may be a really shitty parent.
Now she's in a self driving car with drunk boys, and nobody has to keep there hands on the wheel?
Out of the frying pan and into the fire, I say.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
'I'm just talking now as a parent. Do not wreck yourself about your 5-year-old getting Alzheimer's. Worry more about the fact that when she's a teenager she might be driving around in cars with drunk boys.'
Yeah, that's much more comforting. Thanks, Professor!
well on the plus side, driving around in a car with drunk boys is clinically proven to reduce one's risk of acquiring Alzheimer's.
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
If they could now find out that it's cheaper to find tumors early and have them removed rather than keeping the patient alive that year or two he still lives after it's discovered and determined to be terminal...
Part of the US's vaunted 5 year cancer survival rates vs European single payer systems isn't due to screenings leading to earlier treatment, its due to the disease running the same course over the same period of years and killing the same number of people but being detected earlier in the progression. Imagine a deadly cancer for which there are early screening tests but no treatments at all. The screening typically finds the cancer 4-8 years before death, otherwise the cancer is usually diagnosed via symptoms 1-4 years before death. One country uses the screening test, the other does not. Guess which one has a better 5-year survival rate?
That's an extreme analogy of course, and screening does save lives, but screening can also artificially inflate survival statistics. Cancer mortality rates are the way to go, and overall the US is more or less tied with the EU. For the most preventable common cancer (lung), the US is actually worse than the EU:
http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/how-do-we-rate-the-quality-of-the-us-health-care-system-disease-care/
The advice "carpe diem" ("seize the day") is as good now as it was 2000 years ago when Horace wrote those words.
The advice "carpe diem" meant something different 2000 years ago when Horace wrote those words. Then, he wrote "carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero" -- or, as your translation states, "seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the next". His meaning was more along the lines of the ant vs the grasshopper in Aesop's fable. Seize the day, prepare for your future, work while you're healthy, make hay while the sun shines, and pack your 401k with as much as you can afford (or at least enough to get your full company match). Make sure your future is secure today, because you don't know what'll happen to you tomorrow.
Nowadays, "carpe diem" is usually interpreted to mean something akin to your post. Go see the world, party with your friends, have a great time, even YOLO. It can still be good advice (you might get Alzheimer's when you're 50, so see the world today while you can appreciate it) but the fact remains that the meaning of the exhortation has changed in the modern era.