Medical records and DNA Testing

I'm a doctor. So my personal beliefs about medical records are based, in part, on what the legalities are regarding entitlement to view. Currently, there are very few people who are entitled to unrestricted access to a patient's medical notes, and in very few circumstances. One is the patient. Another is me (of course!). And the third is in certain legal proceedings (although not all). Many insurance companies request a Doctor's report. This is broken down into sections, allowing the doctor to divulge certain information, but also enabling him/her to withold irrelevant information. As doctors, we are not entitled to fill in this report without the written ...  Read the complete review

I think the effectiveness in DNA and advanced criminology tactics was beautifully expressed in the Tony Martin case. He was the slightly deranged farmer who blew away a young gypsy burglar who had come down to his property to rob it. It was very controversial at the time because of the public outcry of the simple man protecting his property argument. But forensics discovered that the Norfolk farmer was far from innocent and had set a trap for the next bunch of vagabonds that entered his farmhouse. Police advised him after repeated burglaries to get security lights. Also to join the local neighborhood watch scheme that has been very successful in their rural ...  Read the complete review

DNA testing is an explosive and still relatively new look at science. The stuff of life. Within this genetic code are the markers of all of our predecessors, and that thought alone blows my mind in a very hippie sort of way. (Two markers from Mum and Dad, four markers from the Grandparents, eight markers from the Great Grandparents, sixteen from the Great-great Grandparents, thirty two from the Great-great-great Grandparents, and we’re still only as far back as the early 1800’s!) It is a complicated structure, this Deoxyribonucleic Acid. Basically, it is a nucleic acid that forms the main constituent of the chromosomes of all living ...  Read the complete review

Why is it that this is such a difficult question to break down? Why do we find it difficult to believe that an insurance company wants to know if we had Pneumonia as a child before giving us life insurance? Surely it should be expected of us to allow people to pry into our past and explore all our deepest, darkest secrets? Aha, I used the word pry.. now things change. People don't like it when others 'pry' into their own personal life, they dont like being spied upon by companies or perhaps more poignantly individuals. So what are the arguments in this case? The argument for big business is naturally that they want to make more ...  Read the complete review

I worte as a new member and as someone who was genetically tested for a disease called "Alpha1 Antitrypsin Deficiency" - more commonly known as Herediatary Emphysema. You don't get to know about such things unless someone in the family is affected - and as both my parents were "carriers", there was a chance that their offspringh could have been affected. I have the lucky gene! It's a good job I found out too - because my lungs are at risk from smoking, passive smoking (no more crowded pubs for me) and industrial gases. This is a double edged sword. Great that I know, but so does my doctor. My doctor answered ...  Read the complete review