Here and There

Interesting article in today’s NY Times on how (or whether or to what extent) genetics affects things such as aging and vulnerability to disease.

The story more or less confirms a long-held belief (spoiler alert!) — that longevity, like most things in life, is a game of pure chance. Just because you had a grandmother and three uncles and an aunt who lived to be 95 doesn’t mean you will live that long or longer — there are simply too many (mostly environmental) factors throughout one’s life.

That’s not to dismiss genetics altogether. As the article states:

The likely reason is that life span is determined by such a complex mix of events that there is no accurate predicting for individuals. The factors include genetic predispositions, disease, nutrition, a woman’s health during pregnancy, subtle injuries and accidents and simply chance events, like a randomly occurring mutation in a gene of a cell that ultimately leads to cancer.

It’s just to say that you can’t bake a cake without cracking an egg…er, you can’t build a house without chopping down a tree…um. Yeah. I’m bad at cliches.

You get the point. Now read the article.

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