[ExI] 23andme again

[spike]

>... On Behalf Of spike
Subject: Re: [ExI] 23andme again

>... On Behalf Of spike

>>...I want to start an online group for 2 sigma and above Neanderthal, 
>and perhaps another group for 2 sigma and below...  {8^D  spike
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>... gather and observe the difference between the cavemen and the vexmen.
spike 

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Hey cool another idea please.  The notion of that medical condition for
which I am at about 8x risk has been rattling around in my brain.  I
realized it can be an application for one of my favorite mathematical
modeling techniques, superposition of probability distribution functions.  

Imagine some fictional disease, call it Hoerkeimer's Snarkoma, or HS.
Suppose you do a 23 on a fetus and recognize it has a 40% chance of
developing HS.  Baby born, 40 years go by, no HS, so a rather anti-intuitive
result is that if HS has develops at any time in life, then the risk of that
guy getting HS is now only 20%.  If that guy makes it to 60 with no HS, then
his risk of ever getting the disease drops to 10%, and so forth.  Agreed?

We know that some diseases have certain profiles: they show up early in life
or late in life, some can happen any time.  There is a form of childhood
leukemia with a risk/age profile that peaks early, otherwise it wouldn't be
called childhood leukemia, ja?  Likewise with testicular cancer: by the time
you hit 40, most of the risk of that is behind you.  Alzheimers on the other
hand, has a risk profile that is low for most of your life and goes way up
later.

So it occurred to me that my 23 results give me this disturbing 8x risk
factor, but now I need to study the risk/age profile and multiply through in
order to get a realistic risk profile.  It might be that people who get this
disease mostly present with it before age 40, in which case my geezerly but
still healthy self might be way less than 8x risk.

I see this as a nice benefit to 23AndMe: I have no intention of studying all
diseases.  I turned down medical school 30 yrs ago, and I have no intentions
of going there now.  But I will study the hell out of one disease which has
been identified on my 23 results as a high-risk.  Then we get others to do
likewise, which forms a pool of amateur experts in a particular condition.
Form an internet group, yak, then we can have a local picnic with
high-risk-for-Hoerkheimer's Snarkoma and invite a few normal people as a
control group, see if we can pass some useful information or discover some
oddball characteristics about the HS-riskies, compare them in realtime to
the non-riskies.

COOL!  

spike