KDBioSci

The main utility of genetics in health care may be in gene expression not mutation. We have this idea that by knowing our genetic profile we know our genetic disease destiny and can do something special about it. But disease causing mutations tend to either be rare variants with a strong ability to cause a disease or common variants that only slightly increase your risk of disease. If one of this rare strongly disease causing mutations runs in your family you probably know it and you could get tested to see if you inherited it, if you want to know and if there is something you can do about it. But most of us will have the other kind that increase risk slightly. For example about 4-5% of people will develop an intra-cranial aneurysm, an artery balloons in the brain and has a risk of rupture, during their lives. About 1% of aneurysms rupture a year so most people will live a long life and die of something else, more likely heart disease, than die from the aneurysm. If you come from a h...

Medical or really any other software should be built with automated testing from the ground up. Unit tests are small test for each unit/class of software. Writing unit test from the beginning of a software project forces the developers to make code more modular and loosely coupled because the unit test runs one class of code in isolation. The unit test also acts as "living" documentation. The unit test shows an example of  how to use the class, and if the unit test works then we know the "living" document is up to date. When developers document source code they often go back and change the source code but not the document leaving a misleading document. Unit tests are only the first layer of automated testing. Automated tests of the classes working together are needed. These automated tests are more difficult to write but a necessary addition to manual testing. A manual tester has to run the test the first time to discover the potential problem and then test auto...

So sugar is looking bad lately, recent studies on diet are showing sugar (cane sugar or corn syrup, it really doesn't matter which) and simple carbohydrates cause diabetes even more than equal calories from other foods. Studies in the New England Journal of medicine are showing the Mediterreanian diet high in fruits, vegetables, nuts, sea food, olive oil and wine protect from heart disease. The last two are, of course, the most popular. 8% of Americans are diabetic and 16% our pre-diabetic so almost 1/4 of Americans cannot process sugar well.  In response, local governments are banning and taxing sugary drinks and trans fat and they are accused of being a "nanny state". But the first step should be to simply stop subsidizing sugary, carbohydrate laden foods and stop being the treat giving (maybe we should say "granny's cookie") state. Out farm bill provides most of its subsidies to large farms growing corn, corn and more corn, wheat, soy beans and cotton ...