if you have a family history, perhaps move to the country if you want reproduce? :-)

See new calls for federal oversight of genetics data:

'Stanford bioethicist and colleagues call for federal regulation of genetic ancestry testing'

Although your name isn't attached to the sample anymore, scientists are using your DNA to draw conclusions about your community and your ancestors. Some of these studies violate your cultural beliefs. That's what happened to the Havasupai Tribe of Arizona. In 2004, they sued Arizona State University, the institution that originally collected the DNA, for failing to provide ethical oversight on the use of the samples. The case is still working its way through the courts.

The lack of federal regulation in this and other instances of DNA use will be addressed in the Policy Forum section in the July 3 issue of Science by Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, PhD, of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, and colleagues from four other universities. The need for a clear set of rules governing genetic ancestry testing is becoming more urgent, Lee said, given the proliferation of private corporations that promise consumers insight into their genetic origins.


http://esciencenews.com/ articles...ncestry.testing

See new calls for federal oversight of genetics data:

'Stanford bioethicist and colleagues call for federal regulation of genetic ancestry testing'

Although your name isn't attached to the sample anymore, scientists are using your DNA to draw conclusions about your community and your ancestors. Some of these studies violate your cultural beliefs. That's what happened to the Havasupai Tribe of Arizona. In 2004, they sued Arizona State University, the institution that originally collected the DNA, for failing to provide ethical oversight on the use of the samples. The case is still working its way through the courts.

The lack of federal regulation in this and other instances of DNA use will be addressed in the Policy Forum section in the July 3 issue of Science by Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, PhD, of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, and colleagues from four other universities. The need for a clear set of rules governing genetic ancestry testing is becoming more urgent, Lee said, given the proliferation of private corporations that promise consumers insight into their genetic origins.


http://esciencenews.com/ articles...ncestry.testing

No mention of Cochran's pathogenic theory?

"The problem is that, because scientists can now identify the ancestry behind the DNA, such samples can be used to draw conclusions about small, possibly vulnerable groups of people."

In what way are they "vulnerable" if their identity is not known?

As long as people sign off on how this info could be used, I am okay with it. Read first!

No mention of Cochran's pathogenic theory?

I wasn't aware it was Cochran's theory (as opposed to the theory favored by Cochran)? One of the papers:

Schizophrenia patients are more likely, compared to the general population, to have been born in the winter or the spring. Although infections such as influenza and measles have been proposed as a possible mechanism for this distortion, a clear association between infectious agents and schizophrenia has not been demonstrated. The association with the MHC region reported here supports a role for infection but, as many non-immune-related genes are also found in the extended MHC region, it does not provide strong evidence. On the basis of the 3,130 schizophrenia patients for which month of birth information was available, no significant difference in the frequency of the top SNPs from the MHC region according to season of birth (winter/spring versus summer/autumn) was identified (P > 0.29).

I don't know who originally thought up the theory, I just associate it with Cochran since his New Germ Theory is that anything which is relatively common, fitness reducing and not recent is the result of infectious disease, and he's used schizophrenia as an example.

I guess we all have anecdotes that makes us lean in a certain direction. Not being a scientist, I don't have to feel guilty about that.

I recall reading a few things about the likelihood of an infectious causation to mental illness. In fact, I think I had just read the article "Mind Germs" in which Paul Ewald is referenced and quoted, and I think I had read the Atlantic Mag article in which Ewald and Cochran are interviewed. Both articles were quite old by the time I read them.

Not many days later, I had lunch with a good friend who told me of her niece's on-going struggle with bi-polar illness. Now in her late thirties, her niece had been forced to quit her teaching position. She just couldn't maintain emotional stability.

The woman's brother, my friend's nephew, had committed suicide his senior year of high school many years earlier. No one saw it coming, the typical out-of-the-blue story of a kid who was, in hindsight, depressed, yet no one knew. Of course, in those days, teen depression was not the common topic it is today.

Having just read about germs and mental illness and now thinking about this brother and sister who both suffered from mental illness, I asked my friend if her sister-in-law had been ill at all during her pregnancy with either child.

"Are you kidding?" she spurted. "I spent my summer vacation taking care of her the first couple of months of her pregnancy. She had mono."


Wow. I had just read about the possible connection between the Epstein-Barr virus and mental illness. I guess my eyes got really big, enough that my friend said, "Why? What's wrong? She delivered the baby just fine in the end. Everything was okay."

The girl, the bi-polar victim, was the first-born. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like either came out "okay."