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["Marie McHarry" <mmcharry AT gmail.com>]

On 12/10/06, EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net> wrote:

> I disagree here.  James, for an intelligent guy such as yourself, this
> is shocking to me.  There are hundreds of folks alive today because of
> gene therapy, and last I heard over 70 diseases were under in vitro
> study for gene therapy.

We're not talking science here, Bev. We're into theology and received
wisdom. Of course, our genes affect our health, and of course being
active and eating well is going to allow a given individual to do as
well as possible with the genes he was born with. Many people can
dodge a bullet indefinitely with a healthful approach to living, but
some can't.

One of my grandfathers lived into his 90s with a cigarette constantly
hanging off his lip (didn't die of lung cancer or heart disease
either) and the other lived what even James would consider a model
life and died of stomach cancer in his mid-70s.

There are identified genes for a number of diseases. Some examples are
cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, Marfan syndrome, Huntington's
disease, and hereditary hemochromatosis. Diseases in which a number of
genes are involved include heart disease, high blood pressure,
Alzheimer's disease, arthritis, diabetes, cancer, and obesity. If
you've ever bred animals, you know that certain traits are highly
heritable and others only moderately so (and that some good traits are
associated wiith some bad ones). Humans have the same ability to
inherit traits but the breeding isn't controlled.

Marie