Tan Yin Gene?

[Guest guest]

Here's an interesting story I heard on NPR last night. There were so

many references to dampnes and phlegm I just had to share it with you all...

 

NPR: It wasn't so long ago that the discovery of a gene linked to a

disease made big news. There were breathless reports about the cancer

genes, the cystic fibrosis genes, heart disease genes, you get the

picture.

 

NPR Announcer: Now, there are so many it's hard to get excited anymore

but we've found an exception. Scientists have honed in on the ear wax

gene. And as NPR's Richard Harris reports, the findings have

implications for everything from underarm odor to dinosaurs...

 

NPR: Before you think that scientists really have nothing better to do

then probe the true nature of ear wax consider this: the hunt for the

wax gene actually started out in a rather noble vein. Scientists in

Japan were looking for a gene involved in a rare form of inherited

epilepsy when they came across a curious clue: ear wax.

 

NPR: Though most Asians have a dry kind of ear wax, one woman with a

rare inherited epilepsy told researchers that wet ear wax runs in her

family. So Keruaki Tomita (spelling based on phonetics) and his

colleagues followed that clue:

 

Tomita: " In one family all the patients had the wet type ear wax and all

the healthy individuals had dry kind of ear wax. "

 

NPR: The researchers realized that if they could find the gene for ear

wax texture it would probably be close to the gene for the rare mental

disease. Sure enough they report that both genes are found in the

middle of chromosome 16. Tomita, at the University of California at

Irvine is pressing on with this research.

 

Tomita: " we're trying to find the gene for the disease and also the gene

for the ear wax trait "

 

NPR: He hopes to be able to decode the gene in a year or two. Now, you

may be surprised to learn that ear wax has been the subject of

scholoarly research for many decades. Since the 1960's, anthropologists

have used wet versus dry ear wax traits to follow the migration of human

population. It also turns out that people with wet ear wax have more

oderiferous armpits.

 

(News story went on to talk about how ear wax resembles the precursers

to fossil fuel) Full story can be heard:

http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/atc/20020617.atc.07.ram

 

--

Al Stone L.Ac.

<AlStone

http://www.BeyondWellBeing.com

 

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.