Presidential DNA: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?
Millions of individuals in the United States will know something about their own DNA by 2012. Whole genome sequencing will no longer be the exotic luxury item it is today. Genome scans like those available now for a few hundred dollars will be dirt cheap, if not free. By almost all accounts, [...]

Millions of individuals in the United States will know something about their own DNA by 2012. Whole genome sequencing will no longer be the exotic luxury item it is today. Genome scans like those available now for a few hundred dollars will be dirt cheap, if not free. By almost all accounts, genetic information will be more accessible to more people in 2012 than it is today.

The next presidential candidates will face an electorate that is radically more conversant in and curious about DNA than ever before. We should reasonably expect that the presidential election of 2012 will include, for the first time, requests for candidates to make their genetic information part of the public record.

Should the candidates heed these requests?

In an article published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, Robert Green and George Annas advocate for the next presidential candidates to honor a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy for DNA. If genetic information is invoked by either candidate, the authors argue, the outcome will almost surely be one of exaggerated claims:

“…in the world of inflammatory accusations and smears that characterize presidential politics, it would be easy to engage in what might be called “genetic McCarthyism” by implying that an increased risk of disease is more substantial than it really is.”

The issue of presidential DNA and who gets access to it, is here to stay. 2012 presidential hopefuls have a few years to work out their talking points.

What would your talking points be? Would requests for disclosure of genetic information affect your decision to run for public office? Could you imagine scenarios where genetic information might influence your decision to vote for one candidate over another?

This week I’ll be interviewing Robert Green to learn more about his views on the future role, or absence, of genetics in political campaigns. Comments are open.

–

Green, Robert C., Annas, George J. The Genetic Privacy of Presidential Candidates. N Engl J Med 2008 359: 2192-2193.

Simon the Monkey-Slayer: Update
Simon has been a non-smoker for four weeks (as of yesterday)! He's awesome, but not entirely out of the woods yet. We're aiming for six months, and then he gets the reward of us going on a para-sailing trip!

Thanks to everyone for their support! Keep it coming!

Love!

Adventures in maintaining a concrete hull.
Simon and I painted the Polar Bear white after several hard days' graft of sanding in Wales. It was originally blue. It was only after several days with a palm sander that we discovered that an angle grinder fitted with sanding disks was literally 100 times faster in removing the old paint.

Then, after we brought Polar Bear down to Portsmouth and hauled her out again, we discovered that the paint was already falling off in parts. That is when we learned that it is uncommonly difficult to keep paint on a concrete hull. Our new plan of attack was to sand it down all the way to the concrete on the lower half and down pretty far on the upper half and try again.

We have heard from other concrete boat owners that epoxy-based tar is a better way to go than marine paint. We've already bought the paint, though, so we are going to give it one more try. Also, tar is black, so we would have to rename her "Black Bear." Also, we need to rule out the possibility that the paint didn't set well due to the cold temperature in Wales, rather than just because the hull is concrete. We'll see how it turns out.

In the meantime, we owe a debt of gratitude to the Dearn family, all of whom spent several weekends in August to help us strip this hull down. We now know the hull intimately, though, and are happy to report that it is in great shape. Where we had rust, we ground it out, cleaned the fresh metal with acid and filled the holes with an epoxy-concrete goo. This worked astonishingly well and was easy to do. Simon was like a dentist, filling holes at the bottom of the keel. After the goo was placed in there, we used duct tape to hold it in while it hardened. Then we removed the duct tape and viola! But the epoxy mix turned his hands black for about two weeks.

We have similarly gone down to the hull on the inside (only the front half is done), and have rooted out any rust there, and painted over bear metal with an epoxy paint. There was very little, though.

The most important lesson that we learned: epoxy can fix anything (we also used it to help build some of our carpentry, but that is another post). It is our favorite substance. We should buy stock.




So it isn't much to look at right now, but it is beautiful to us since we know that the hull has it where it counts. We know that concrete can look rough, but it is unique. It doesn't look glassy like a fiberglass hull. Most people think that it is steel when it is painted, and it does look similar to that. Anyway, thanks to the great properties of a concrete hull, the marine paint is more for looks than for protection or functionality (unlike most other boats).

We couldn't paint the hull this last summer because it was too cold and wet. When we painted the decks -- see pictures below -- it rained right afterwards, creating a mottled, goopiness to the paint. The decks now require another coat -- which is OK, since we still need to put down the non-slip, but we don't want to make the same mistake with the hull.

Here are the topsides with our dinghy lashed on top (our dinghy was a salvage, and we haven't refurbished it yet... but it is awesome to get free dinghies, in my opinion).

Labels: