#genetic factors in diabetes

[diabetesreversalprograminindia]

How Genetics Affects Type 2 Diabetes?

This article is originally published on Freedom from Diabetes website , available here. You want to know, is type-2 diabetes is genetic or not? The answer is yes. But it is depend upon some factors. It is something in your environment that actually triggers it. For proof, we can look at identical twins. They have identical genes. Yet if one twin gets type 2 diabetes, the other twin's risk is three in four at most. Lets understand genetic diabetes symptoms?

Frequent need to visit the washroom.

Increase in appetite

Fatigue

Lack of clarity in vision

Repeated infections

healing wounds

Now the question is type 2 diabetes genetic, can it be reversed or not. To know it please click here. If you found this blog useful, please recommend it and share it with others!

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[karmaphone]

hate those ads that are like 'the RISK of type 1 diabetes is REAL' like can we not fearmonger over literal genetics thanks

[health-and-fitness-care]

High blood pressure system and causes information

Increased blood pressure in the arteries is a medical disease known as hypertension, or high blood pressure. It’s a vital component of cardiovascular health that has broad effects on general wellbeing. This illness usually takes time to manifest, and until problems happen, it frequently remains asymptomatic.High blood pressure is caused by a number of variables, such as underlying medical…

[3rdbogwitch2theleft]

Shoutout to all my fellow possessors of limited medical history. Adoptees, children of single parents, adult children of parents who passed away young, people who come from families that don’t talk about illness. 

Every time we visit the doctor we prepare for a barrage of unanswerable questions armed only with our considerable sense of humor and a lifetime of guesswork. 

“And was that on the paternal or maternal side?”

“I have no paternal medical history. That’s actually one of the reasons I want to do this bloodwork.”  

3 minutes later

“And this cousin, is that the paternal or maternal side?” 

“You think in the space of the last three minutes I hired a PI and tracked down my birth father and got a full family history from him?” 

[championlaura222]

I'm sick of the moraliazation of illness/disability. I see it a lot when it comes to type 2 diabetes. I'm sick of the idea that it's just "fat person disease." Talk to pretty much any doctor and they'll tell you that the main factor in type 2 diabetes is genetics. My mom's side has a higher likelihood for type 2 diabetes, my dad's side does not. Despite my dad being extremely overweight for much of his life, not even a sign! My Nan had some weight gain in her 50s, not that much from how much she weighed, and she ended up with it. There's no "right" way to be ill, I'm tired of the stigma around the idea that a person "does it to themselves" and thus is okay to ridicule and not listen to. In fact, Weight in general has more to do with genetics than most other factors! Think about how many people live off redbull and fast food and don't gain weight from it! And even if someone did get sick because of their actions, you shouldn't go around ridiculing them over that!

[scientia-rex]

Hysteria isn't a fucking thing

ok fun fact: I'm rapidly becoming a cult favorite doctor among our local privileged elderly white ladies, which I have mixed feelings about, but the #1 reason is that I just don't leap to "anxiety" as an explanation for symptoms unless the patient tells me "I am anxious, and then I feel these symptoms, and when I am not anxious, I don't feel these symptoms."

The sheer number of women I've seen who've been told for years to decades that the only thing wrong with them is anxiety is fucking staggering, in this Year Of Our Lord 2023, and I just keep digging. We checked a basic lab panel, sure. CBC. No anemia. CMP. Kidneys are fine. (Electrolytes are basically always going to be fine if someone is well enough to walk into my office under their own power to talk to me. Exception is mild chronic hyponatremia.) And we check thyroid. TSH and free T4. We check blood sugar. A1c, if the fasting is a little weird. Fasting insulin, if I'm still suspicious. We check cortisol. Inflammatory markers--ESR and CRP.

And eventually, if the symptoms support it, or right away, depending on my level of suspicion, we check rheumatological labs for abnormal autoimmune function. Anti-nuclear antibody. Rheumatoid factor. There's at least a dozen you can check, and which ones you should check is always a matter of debate and also of expertise that I 100% lack. We are out in the sticks. There are no "local" rheumatologists for me to send people to.

But a couple of weeks ago I found a woman--she has bipolar disorder and has been told for decades that's all that's wrong with her--who has an anti-centromere antibody titer that's fucking through the roof. I found an anxious 19-year-old with an ANA of 1:1380. And yesterday I found out why a sweet elderly woman I've seen for a year or two now started feeling crappy months ago: her rheumatoid factor is over 90.

Rheumatological disorders are always difficult. Our understanding of them varies from "pretty good, actually, and here are useful treatments" to "Well I Guess That Exists." Labs aren't always a slam-dunk and even labs plus symptoms can give you misleading impressions. Your immune system can decide that virtually any short chunk of protein is an enemy, and the problem with that is that your body is made up of many, many, many short chunks of proteins, so the odds that you'll develop some kind of antibody against yourself just keeps going up over your lifetime. Immune disorders tend to travel in packs; there's a clear genetic element to it, so the more first-degree relatives (parent, sibling, child) you have with any kind of autoimmune disorder (including Type 1 diabetes), the higher your risk of any kind of autoimmune disorder is, and if you already have one autoimmune disorder, you're at higher risk for developing another one.

But I think it's precisely because they're difficult that a lot of mainstream primary care prefers to pretend they don't exist, rather than try to sift through the utter fucking mess that is Mixed Connective Tissue Disorders, a title that has fallen out of favor since I learned it in my third year of med school. And women are at higher risk for autoimmune disorders than men. And older women are at higher risk than younger women.

So if I, as a family doc, just keep digging, just keep poking at the tangled knot of symptoms, there's a decent chance I will uncover something interesting. Hopefully something treatable. Sometimes we have nothing to treat with, and I just get to offer someone more understanding of their disorder, which feels pretty paltry but is better than the casual dismissal of "You're just anxious."

Never, ever, ever take anxiety as a diagnosis for a symptom other than anxiety. Not even as a rule-out. Keep those symptoms as an open question mark on the patient. Don't say "anxiety" just so you can close the door. And damn sure don't do it to women.

I'm actively working on learning more so I can be more helpful, in our Rheum-less community, so if you have good lectures or books, please drop me a lead.

[a-d-nox]

what's a dna (asteroid 55555) persona? what can a dna persona chart show you?

hypothetically, your dna chart can tell you more about the genetic predisposition of your health, what genetic diseases and mutations you are at risk for, your ancestry, and your genetic traits.

mini disclaimer: genetic/ethnicity/ancestry can be a delicate subject for a lot of people - this is is topical post about what the planets and houses could mean. i am not a doctor or geneticist - this chart can not be used to diagnose health issues/problems or anything else with 100% accuracy.

sun

your genetic identity, your projected vitality, genetic predispositions you should pay attention to, genetic prominence, genetic connects to royal/famous/infamous individuals, and/or how your genetics are different from your ancestors / what makes you an individual (not a clone - or perhaps different from a twin)

moon

what you inherited from your mother, your family's heritage, how your ancestors have adapt/evolved to make you who you are today, neanderthal ancestry ratios, hereditary menstrual issues, genetic fertility factors, and/or the brca / pcos / uterine fibroids gene

mercury

genetic mental health conditions, neurological conditions/diseases, taste/smell/hearing, how you can change your genetic "fate," what genetics can be forgot, aptitude to speak the languages of your ancestors, and/or how your daily routine affects your genetics (nature versus nurture)

venus

genetic attraction / who you attract to create viable offspring that is meant to survive, your genetic beauty, your ability to preform self love (aka your ability to cope with hereditary depression and anxiety), genetic hair type, genetic femininity (xx, x0, xxx, etc), genetics you share with a majority of your family, values and festivities with have due to heritage, genetics diabetes, genetic cheerfulness versus depression, and/or pcos gene

mar

genetic confidence in public speaking, competitiveness that makes your genes superior to past generations, genetic athleticism / muscle composition, genetic masculinity (xy, xxy, etc), genetic dominance, and/or prone to violence (neanderthal influence)

jupiter

where you are lucky in the genetic lottery, where you have an abundance of genetic information, where are successful in breaking genetic trends, your opportunity to beat the genetic odds, your knowledge of your genetic makeup, genetic blessings, where you can afford to be optimistic about your health, and/or genetic predisposition to macular degeneration

saturn

what you should work hard to be your genetic makeup, genetic health challenges, what you inherited from your father, genetics fears/anxieties, how long you can live if you are healthy, your genetic limitations, ancestry, genetic deficiencies, and/or the effort you make to beat your genetics

uranus

genetics of social anxiety, sudden changes historical genetics - where you are the first in your family diagnosed with a genetic mutation/disorder, what makes you genetically unique, and/or shocking/unexpected ancestry/origin

neptune

genetic alcoholism/escapism, hidden genetic knowledge or ancestry, delusions surrounding your heritage, disappearance of heritage, and/or the fascination you have with your ancestry and genetic

pluto

genetic transformation, the power in your genes, genetic sex, destructive genes, you genetic projected death, regenerative genes, your obsession with your genetics and heritage, and/or your genetic evolution

1h

genetic identity/self, outward physical traits / appearance, physical body, physical genetic build, genetic individuality, and/or passion for genetics

2h

genetic wealth, effort you put in to beat your genetics, genetic material, values surrounding your heritage, genetic stability, giving/receiving your heritage, and resources surrounding your genetics

3h

how your genetics are communicated, genetic mental health issues and disabilities, your opinions about your heritage, how you can consciously fight your genetics, genetic relationship with your siblings, interest in your heritage and genetics, and/or information you have on your ancestry and genetics

4h

genetic/familial origins and roots, your parents genetics, how you were treated in childhood based on your genetics, heredity traits, traditions you upload because of your heritage, and/or genetic femininity

5h

your children's genetics, creative methods of celebrating your heritage, who you are attracted to based on genetics/ethnicity, vacations you take to reconnect with your heritage/ethnicity, hobbies/festivities/traditions that are related to your ethnicity, and/or genetic fertility (pcos, fibroids, etc)

6h

how your daily routine is affecting your genetics or rather triggering your genetics, your genetic health, how fitness/hygiene/medication/diet can benefit for life expectancy because of genetic factors, the self improvement you do to fight genetic pre-destiny, how consistency aids/harms your health, how you help others to better understand their origin, and/or genetic analytics

7h

your significant others' ethnicity/heritage, genetic attraction, genetic attractiveness, contracts with genetic storage banks (for instance mine is in a 23&me storage data bank), how others treat you based on your genetics, and/or genetics share with those in your family

8h

dna mutations, projected longevity based on your genetic makeup, changes you should make to live longer, how much time invest into getting to know more about your genetics and heritage, what you inherited from your ancestors genetically, genetic reproductive rates, assets of your ethnicity, secrets about your ethnicity, the spiritual transformation that occurs when you learn more about your heritage/roots, and/or trauma related to race/ethnicity/heritage

9h

beliefs/religion/ideologies associated with your roots, what can learn about your heritage/ethnicity, languages associated with your roots, where your ancestors immigrated or where they emigrated from, genetic ethics, and/or what you can learn about your ancestors

10h

your genetic legacy/offspring, what the world believes your origins are, how you can beat genetics, long-term health goals you may have, what you inherit from your father, and/or genetic experts in your life

11h

what you gain from having knowledge of your ancestors, genetics you share with a half sibling, what makes you genetically unique, how technology can help you learn more about your genetic background, social awareness you have others ethnicities/culture/heritages, and/or how your genes manifest

12h

how you can heal using your genetic information, the hidden features of your genetic code, your projected age, how well you sleep based on your genetics, mental health issues you have a predisposition to, genetic fears you have in place so that you can survive, what you don't know about your genetics, and/or how you should restrict yourself to promote longevity/vitality

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[transmutationisms]

this hasn't happened to me in a long while, but when I was a kid getting weighed I remember a doctor pulling out a separate BMI chart for Asians with lower cutoffs. this was around a decade ago. no doctors have done this since. is that like, normal? or in any way meaningful?

'normal', unfortunately yes---I don't know that I've heard of doctors actually making up charts for this but it is a commonly held belief among physicians and epidemiologists that BMI cutoffs should be lower for Asians than for whites, because Asians supposedly have higher rates of weight-correlated adverse health outcomes (diabetes, CVD, &c) at the same BMIs.

meaningful is a different matter. there are two major and really damning issues with this belief:

firstly, the (handful of) studies documenting this disparity have all the same issues as any other medical literature on weight and health. we don't actually have good evidence to say that weight causes these health outcomes; it's difficult to disentangle environmental factors, or the fact that disease can often cause the weight gain itself, as in the case of diabetes or 'metabolic syndrome'. weight stigma, not interchangeable with weight itself, has a massive and documented negative effect on health outcomes. also, as far as I can tell, most if not all of the studies on this particular question seem to have been done using Asian-American subjects specifically, so that opens a whole host of further statistical ambiguities: you're talking about immigrant populations in the US. physicians love to interpret shit like this as evidence of biological racial differences instead of probing questions like: does this suggest that Asian immigrants to the US are subjected to forms of marginalisation that cause particular health effects? and the usual critiques of weight science include the problem that long-term deliberate weight loss is not achievable for th vast majority of people save through the development of behaviours that would otherwise be identified as eating-disordered, so BMI chart cutoffs are of pretty limited value for individual health guidance even if we were confident in their causal relationships.

secondly, and arguably even more fundamentally, any data that purport to differentiate people on the basis of race are data that are using an invented social category, not a 'natural' or biological one. there are absolutely health outcomes and conditions that affect different populations at different rates or with varying effects. but 'Asian' is not a coherent category genetically, epigenetically, historically, physiologically, or anything else. it's no more a 'real' biological grouping of people than 'white' or any other racial category. these are social designations, they're not biological facts. medicine that purports to display sensitivity to marginalised groups by reifying the biological ideology that defines them is reactionary at its core, and is not even solving the problems people think it is. when we lean on the idea of racial health disparities, we're basically relying on a crude average of a whole bunch of different people and groups who have been socially slotted into one 'race' category. this doesn't help people; on the contrary, it often obscures the actual rates of particular health issues in different populations: for example, the gene responsible for sickle cell anemia is common in families from many parts of the world, and sickle cell anemia is not a 'race-based disease' but an inherited genetic disorder. the allure of 'innate racial differences' as an etiological explanation is still pervasive and pernicious in medicine as elsewhere. Rana Hogarth talks about this in the epilogue to Medicalising Blackness, and I've also heard Iris Clever discuss it in conferences, although to my knowledge her published work focusses more on the epistemological architecture of genetic and anthropological databases. anyway my point is that, even if we solved all the issues raised in part 1 above and were confident that we had indeed pinpointed BMI cutoffs causally linked to adverse health effects, it still would be harmful and not helpful to set these cutoffs on the basis of 'race', which is a social system of categorisation and marginalisation and has no biological basis or 'natural' justification.

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/742116226529099776/that-is-in-fact-the-part-we-disagree-on-there?source=share

A lot of stuff like this feels like the kind of concern trolling that makes people want to cure diabetes by harassing fat people about their diets.

Yes, diabetes is bad, and yes there isn't as much f/f fic as m/m. But your f/f ship being a rarepair isn't caused by fanfic authors being pro-gay, and worldwide diabetes statistics aren't caused by fat people enjoying dessert.

You can't focus on something that's only tangentially related to a large problem and think that yelling at people to stop enjoying things will cure the world. You have to do real activism.

Yelling at m/m shippers for writing too much gay smut makes you a homophobic jerk and discourages them from writing f/f, while doing absolutely nothing about sexism in society.

Yelling at fat people for eating sweets makes you a fatphobic jerk and makes people feel bad about their bodies and encourages them to eat less healthy diets (starving yourself leads to health complications!), while doing absolutely nothing to prevent what is ultimately a genetic disorder.

--

TBH, both could be looked at as access problems to a degree too.

"Healthy" diets (a complicated topic, obviously, but go with me here) can be out of reach either financially or logistically. Other factors for making that genetic predisposition turn into actual diabetes have a lot to do with money and time and the involuntary parts of people's lifestyles.

Similarly, while there absolutely is plenty of media full of female characters with great dynamics with each other, and people who strongly prefer this stuff are already seeking it out, it's also the case that a lot of the truly massive fandoms form around things with 300-million dollar advertising budgets. Those things tend to be sausagefests. Effects on the resulting fanfic are predictable.

It's not just about what's possible but about what's convenient. If [desirable lifestyle thing X] isn't the first one most people encounter every morning, it may just not happen. People don't have infinite time, attention, and will to make that change. They're fucking busy.

Pester Hollywood studios and deal with food deserts first. People having "bad taste" will take care of itself.

[realcleverscience]

Well, at least some of us are smart creatures of the night.

~~~

"Previous studies have associated 'eveningness' to detrimental health outcomes, including putting them at greater risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease, and even a 10% higher risk of early death compared to 'morning people.' Night owls have also been linked to having a higher rate of psychological and neurological disorders.

Genetics studies have indicated that morning-night sleep preferences is closely tied to our biology, ... Recently, it's even been tied to evolution, linking attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 'eveningness' with something deemed the Watchman Theory. It suggests that for the nearly three quarters of ADHD sufferers who report sleep problems, including "bedtime resistance," it might be traced back to hunter-gatherer days, when those genes and time-shifted circadian rhythms made a certain group of people excellent at keeping watch over tribes late into the night...

After adjusting for health and lifestyle factors, such as chronic disease, smoking and alcohol intake, the researchers found that night owls scored around 13.5% higher than morning people in one group, and 7.5% higher in another group. What's more, morning people had consistently lower test scores across the board, with even the 'intermediate' types – those who considered themselves more somewhere in the middle – doing 10.6% and 6.3% better than early risers."

[fatliberation]

Hello, I want to thank you for the information you shared on diabetes (or rather impaired glucose tolerance). My dad was recently diagnosed with pre-diabetes and his mom (my grandma) was diagnosed with diabetes. I know your post is about how sugar isn't the deciding factor in developing diabetes but ever since my dad was diagnosed he has been warning me about how I eat more sugar than him. Since diabetes seems to run in my family (which is a big factor) I'm not sure what I should do. Do you think I should reduce my sugar because of my genetics or will that not make a difference? Thank you for any advice!

Hi anon, I’m so glad that information was helpful to you! I reposted it from Dr. Larmie, so I personally can’t answer this for you as I am not an expert on diabetes. My understanding is that you may be able to delay it, but I recommend finding a HAES and anti-diet aligned healthcare professional because my knowledge on this is limited.

[mindblowingscience]

A new paper in Molecular Biology and Evolution shows that a condition known as Dupuytren's disease is partly of Neanderthal origin. Researchers have long known that the disease was much more common in Northern Europeans than in those of African ancestry. Dupuytren's disease is a disorder affecting the hand. Those who suffer from the condition eventually see their hands become bent permanently in a flexed position. Although the condition can affect any finger, the ring and middle fingers are most often afflicted. Scientists have previously identified several risk factors for the condition, including age, alcohol consumption, diabetes, and genetic predisposition. A 1999 Danish study reported 80% heritability for the condition, indicating a strong genetic influence. The condition is much more common in people of Northern European ancestry. One study estimated the prevalence of Dupuytren's disease among Norwegians over 60 years to be as much as 30%. The condition is rare, however, for those of primarily African descent. This apparent geographic distribution has given Dupuytren's disease the nickname "Viking disease."

Continue Reading

[gallifreyinstituteforlearning]

does/can type 1 diabetes exist in Time Lords/Gallifreyans? or would the technology be advanved enough to cure it?

Does diabetes exist in Time Lords?

In humans, diabetes is a condition characterised by issues with insulin production (Type 1) or insulin resistance (Type 2). For Gallifreyans, while their advanced biology provides some natural defences, they're not completely impervious and deal with a slightly different set of issues:

1️⃣Type 1 Diabetes in Gallifreyans

Manifestation and Symptoms:

In humans, Type 1 diabetes is characterised by the immune system declaring an unprovoked war on pancreatic beta cells, reducing or halting insulin production. For Gallifreyans, a similar autoimmune response could theoretically target cells or mechanisms involved in their glucose regulation - namely, X1 blood cells.

Given that X1 cells are responsible for transporting glucose, an autoimmune attack might disrupt this process, leading to irregular glucose levels despite their naturally higher baseline (8.9-11.7 mmol/L).

Symptoms might include a rollercoaster of energy levels and cognitive hiccups due to glucose imbalances.

Diagnosis and Management:

Gallifreyans would be born/loomed with Type 1 diabetes, possibly due to genetic predispositions or anomalies during the looming process.

Diagnosis would likely involve advanced biometric scanning and analysis of blood composition, focusing particularly on the functionality of X1 cells and their glucose transport capacity.

Treatments could involve cellular regeneration, genetic editing, or immunotherapy alongside your standard spacey-wacey machine™* to regulate glucose levels or cure it completely. And, of course, the simplest way to cure anything is regeneration, but it is probably a bit drastic and not a guaranteed fix if the condition is inherent in their genetic makeup.

2️⃣Type 2 Diabetes in Gallifreyans

Manifestation and Symptoms:

Type 2 diabetes, typically associated with insulin resistance, is far less common in Gallifreyans due to their efficient glucose management and general physiological Certificate of Excellence. This condition could develop at any time in a Gallifreyan's life, potentially due to lifestyle factors or physiological changes.

It might manifest as a reduced efficiency of X1 cells in glucose transport despite normal insulin production. Basically, the X1 cells have suddenly become slackers.

Symptoms could be subtler and might include reduced efficacy in their regenerative abilities and a slight decrease in overall vitality.

Also, because their homostatic mechanisms are so 'on-fleek', they'll start trying desperately to compensate, most notably in physiological cues, including dietary adjustments, increased exercise, stress management, and fluid intake adjustments.

Diagnosis and Management:

Preventive measures would likely be a key focus, with monitoring of individual health parameters to detect any early signs of insulin resistance.

Treatment could involve lifestyle interventions, although these might be more about fine-tuning. Additionally, advanced therapies to enhance X1 cell function or counteract insulin resistance at a cellular level could be employed. And you can always rely on your spacey-wacey machine™ for a complete cure.

Again, regeneration is an unnecessary drastic solution, but unlike Type 1, it would be effective in completely curing Type 2.

⚕️Holistic Approach

Gallifreyan medical technology approaches things more holistically, considering the interplay of their unique blood components, endocrine functions, and immune responses. The use of advanced diagnostics, personalised medicine, and possibly even real-time monitoring and adjustment of physiological parameters would be standard practices in their healthcare system.

🏫 So ...

In Gallifreyan society, while diabetes may not be as prevalent or manifest in the same way as in humans, it's a condition that their medical technology is well-equipped to manage. And if it can't manage it, there's always regeneration, but don't be wasting those bodies, now.

*A spacey-wacey machine™: any piece of equipment that can magically do future-y things because, well, sci-fi.

Related (kind of, not really):

Do Time Lord-specific disabilities exist?: Types of disabilities specifically for Gallifreyans, both known and theoretical.

Can disabilities persist through regenerations?: The nature of inherent and regeneration-specific disabilities.

Hope that helped! 😃

More content ... →📫Got a question? | 📚Complete list of Q+A and factoids →😆Jokes |🩻Biology |🗨️Language |🕰️Throwbacks |🤓Facts →🫀Gallifreyan Anatomy and Physiology Guide (pending) →⚕️Gallifreyan Emergency Medicine Guides →📝Source list (WIP) →📜Masterpost If you're finding your happy place in this part of the internet, feel free to buy a coffee to help keep our exhausted human conscious. She works full-time in medicine and is so very tired 😴

[thedustyleaves]

So its basically for my OCs, but I know that one of the biggest eyesight problem factors are genetic (I wore glasses since I was 6)

but how big are the chances for a child to NOT have eyesight problem when both of their parents have it?

And vice versa, how big are the chances for a child to have eyesight problem when both of their parents have healthy eyes?

Assuming both child have same lifestyle.

It’s quite random honestly, there’s a bigger risk of passing it down if both parents are myopic, but studies can’t really agree on the exact percentage. It might never get passed down, like my mother is high-myopic and none of her three children have myopia!

It’s the same for a child developing myopia, hyperopia or astigmatism, despite their parents having neither. One of the biggest risk for a child to develop myopia is actually lack of sunlight in early development and forcing kids to sit inside in school for hours a day, which also contributes to why over 30% of the worlds population is myopic, which leads to a ton of other problems (retinal detachment being the biggest issue).

Other problems might be amblyopia or strabismus but both of these will happen in early childhood (unless it’s from trauma etc later in life), which can be due to things like undiscovered high hyperopia or external factors like long hair covering one eye (which has happened).

The things the optometrist is looking for (at least in Denmark) when we’re asking wether or not your parents had any pathological issues with their eyes, we’re looking for things like AMD, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy etc and not if they wore glasses, because you will have a higher risk of developing a pathological issue if your parents have it.

Basically just do whatever you feel like in terms of ametropia being passed down or not, because so much of it is just random or external factors, and even if you do technically have a higher risk due to genetics, it can still skip you entirely.

I hope that made sense! :’)

[dailyanarchistposts]

Biotechnology and the future of humanity

Animals Are Commodities Too

Under slavery human individuals are owned, are property. Under capitalism workers aren’t owned but they have to sell their labour/time/creativity because capitalists own everything (land, the means of production, transport and communication etc) that would enable people to live outside of wage labour and the market place. Now, instead of individuals owning non-human animals as part of their subsistence, corporations are claiming the right to ‘own’ whole species of animals. This process of patenting life can be traced back to the 1980 US Supreme Court ruling, which stated that a GM bacterium (modified to digest oil) could be patented. Not just that one bacterium of course but the whole, created species. In 1985 the US Patent and Trademark Office ruled that GM plants, seeds and plant tissues could be patented. Now the corporations can demand royalties and licence payments every time farmers use those plants or seeds. Monsanto holds a patent on (i.e. owns and rents out) all GM cotton and soya. Patents have been granted on biological characteristics of plants as well. For example, a patent has been issued to Sungene for a variety of sunflower that has a high oleic acid content. But the patent covers the characteristic as well as the genes that code for it, so any plant breeder who achieves the same result by traditional methods could be sued.

In 1987 animals joined the biotech market place when a Harvard biologist patented ‘oncomouse’, a GM organism (mouse) predisposed to develop cancer for use in medical ‘research’. By 1997 40 GM ‘species’ of animal had been patented, including turkey, nematodes, mice and rabbits. Hundreds of other patents are pending on pigs, cows, fish, sheep and monkeys among others. In 1976 a leukaemia patient named John Moore had his cancerous spleen removed under surgery at the University of California. Without his knowledge or consent some of the cells from his spleen were cultured and found to produce a protein which could be used in the manufacture of anti-cancer drugs. The estimated value of this cell-line to the pharmaceutical industry is $3 billion. In 1984 the California Supreme Court ruled that he was not entitled to any of these profits.

A US company called Biocyte holds a patent on (owns) all umbilical cord cells. Systemix Inc has a patent on (owns) all human bone marrow stem cells, these being the progenitors of all cells in the blood. The worldwide market for cell lines and tissue cultures was estimated to be worth $426.7 million to the corporations in 1996. Not only cells but also fragments of DNA can be patented (owned) in this way. Incyte, for example, has applied for patents on 1.2 million fragments of human DNA. The logic of this is that ‘genes for’ particular diseases such as cystic fibrosis, diabetes, various cancers etc could become the property of pharmaceutical companies who could then make huge profits on tests for such genes and genebased therapies. There is no space here to get into a lengthy criticism of the reductionist idea that individual genes simply map onto well-defined physical traits underlying the whole theory and practice of GM. It’s enough to say that research into patenting (owning), for example, a supposed’ breast cancer gene’ is of little benefit to humanity if it is true, as some scientists have estimated, that 90% of breast cancers are unrelated to genetics but are triggered by environmental pollution, diet and lifestyle factors. So what’s new? Capitalism, indeed class-society in general, always seizes the living and turns it into profit and power, declares ownership where previously there was only life: from the enclosure of the commons to the seizing of millions of human beings from Africa to be slaves to the current looting of tropical biodiversity for use in the biotech labs.

[transmutationisms]

not the ko-fi anon for reading lists but i am interested in reading more about diabetes and fatness not being a disease, if you happen to have any recs :)

im not sure what your familiarity is with concepts like medicalisation and biopolitics more broadly but these are pretty foundational ideas for this critique.

if you're new to critical readings on fatness & weight then i think two decent places to start are bacon & aphramor's 'body respect' and paul campos's 'the obesity myth', though both have shortcomings imo. j eric oliver's 'fat politics' probably falls into this category as well. all of these are afflicted with liberalisms and there are also issues that i think often arise from projects that have to read archives or bodies research 'backwards', but these are still useful for introducing paradigms that problematise the medicalisation of fatness, and also raise some of the (many, many) methodological issues plaguing dietetic and weight science.

nicolas rasmussen's 'fat in the fifties' is useful on the question of medicalisation because he presents the rise and fall of fears about an american 'obesity epidemic' in the 1950s as a case study and examinines the political and social (ie, not apolitically scientific) factors that configured fatness as a disease and a pressing political problem in a specific social context, and then the factors that made this 'epidemic' slide further from official view for a few decades after. i disagree with rasmussen on a lot of his policy discussion and he's not aligned with fat liberation by any means; nevertheless i think the historicisation he does here is valuable for anyone interested in the medicalisation of fatness. susan greenhalgh made a case study of china more recently in "neoliberal science, chinese style" in 'social studies of science' 46.4: 485–510 (DOI 10.1177/0306312716655501).

on the more sociological side i'd strongly recommend sabrina strings's 'fearing the black body' and da'shaun harrison's 'belly of the beast'. these focus more on anti-fat attitudes and cultural history/analysis than on directly deconstructing medicalisation and medical research.

wrt diabetes, i would recommend anthony ryan hatch's 'blood sugar', which argues that current scientific and cultural conceptions of metabolic syndrome reify biologised and genetic ideas of race and racial fixity; hatch sees the proposed treatments and diagnostic methods as failing to interrogate the social and economic factors that produce racial disparities in health. james doucet-battle also discusses this in 'sweetness in the blood'. hay and fiddler's 'inventing the thrifty gene: the science of settler colonialism' tackles an analogous medical discourse of race, the idea that indigenous peoples are genetically predisposed to diabetes and obesity, and the ways in which this concept rests on and reinforces categories of race while eliding the colonialism and racism that actually result in poorer health outcomes for indigenous populations. a broader history of diabetes and racial medicine is arleen marcia tuchman's 'diabetes: a history of race and disease', and i also want to pick up karen throsby's 'sugar rush', which came out just last year i think.