All In The Family

So, I'm in this genetic study at the University of British Columbia for the MS Clinic. They're looking at people's histories, where they were born and live, where their families live and what chemicals and levels of sunshine they've been exposed to.  Basically, they want to see if there is a correlation between some of the things we've been talking about (Vitamin D, genes...) and the onset of MS.

I had my first interview last night and it was pretty interesting.  I needed to pull out my resume to answer some questions about where I lived and worked during certain years (I was a nanny in Germany and a bartender in England for a couple of years) and had to provide an approximation of my chemical exposure over the years.

I grew up in Niagara so, I'm pretty sure that they weren't cautious about spraying the hell out of all of that fruit with crazy pesticides back in the day.  Sometimes I'm amazed that all of the people who grew up in wine and fruit producing regions before chemical regulations don't sprout a second head or third eye...but, maybe we just get MS and other fun stuff like that instead!  I'd much rather have MS than a third eye though; people stare at me enough when I have to use my cane, can you imagine if I looked like this...

Anyway, they also asked me a really hilarious question and prefaced it by saying "don't laugh".  You know it's going to be good when...  So, the question was:

"Are your parents related to each other?"

HA.  Don't laugh?!  Yeah right!  I know that way back in the day, people lived in much smaller communities, if in a community at all, and had to hook up with their cousins or whatever but, I was born in the 70's!  And since the invention of the Internet and subsequently E-Harmony, Hot or Not and various fetish websites, I don't think anyone has had to marry their cousin in a long time (well, unless it's featured on one of those fetish websites and they were actually looking for that).  

So, of course my parents aren't related and I'm guessing that 0% of the people in this study answered 'yes' to this question.  The fact that they asked it though made me realize that perhaps they're leaning toward the gene-mutation-theory outlined previously.  Hmmmmmm.... 

It just illustrated the fact that nobody really knows what causes this disease; they know what it does to you for the most part but, not why.  So, I guess we just have to keep trucking on, taking care of ourselves in any way that we can, eat well, drink lots of water, talk (blog) about the issues and most importantly........................

Don't marry your cousin!

Really. 

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