Surprising Facts About At-Home DNA Tests

If you send your DNA to two different companies to find out about your ancestry, you may end up with two different results. That's     1     there's no certification (鉴定) required for DNA-testing companies. They may get the basic idea correct —     2     you are a little less than half northern European, for example, but when they say you're 30 percent from here and 60 percent from there, it's a statistical guess based on their own database and method.

Your results will be     3     (precise) if you're not a native. The more people from your ancestral region in a company's database, the more accurate your results will be.

You can find out your risk of diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's from an at-home DNA test kit, but a laboratory     4     (authorize) to do medical testing will give you much more conclusive results.

The results of your genetic testing could affect your ability to get insurance.     5     federal law prohibits health insurers from denying coverage based on genetic test results, the law does not apply to life, disability, and long-term-care insurance.

Law-enforcement agencies are increasingly using family tree DNA databases to solve crimes, as was done in the arrest of a former police officer accused of being the Golden State Killer. California detectives took the DNA results from various crime scenes,     6     (look) for partial matches on a public genealogy database, and eventually found their man.

The market is also exploding with companies     7     (claim) they can pinpoint the right product -- for your skin or your waistline, for instance - based on a DNA test. But consider them entertainment     8     real science, Greely says. A study found that diets based on genetic tests didn't help people lose weight.

Still, DNA tests can answer questions you've had about yourself - and     9     you didn't know to ask. For example, for     10     additional cost, 23 and Me will include your results on more than 25 individual traits, including if you are likely to be a morning person, whether your hatred of cilantro is genetic, and if your earwax is more likely to be dry or wet.

American College of Physicians 'stepped out of its lane" by placing gun control in medical education. Stanley Gold-farb, formerly the associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, argued that teaching social justice issues and population health comes "at the expense of strict training in medical science" at a time when sub-specialists are in short supply. But many physicians, ourselves included, think social issues should be at the heart of medical education.

Formal medical school typically takes four years, followed by several years of residency（住院医生实习期）and often a fellowship（研究员职位）, and during that short time students have a wide range of competing requirements. They must learn complex biological and chemical pathways that explain diseases and health. They must be educated on how to read the the scientific literature and apply it to their patients. They must master many therapies and know how to adapt them to patients' varied diseases states. On top of all this, they must learn to communicate effectively and compassionately with patients and colleagues.

Being a good doctor also demands that we understand the reasons behind poor health. Our mission is not simply to diagnose, manage and treat. Physicians should act to prevent the root causes of illness and improve well-being. Physicians are trained to tackle problems at their root. System and structural-level social issues are also drivers of poor health, and it is our duty to address them. Medical training must evolve to produce doctors who are able to not only treat the individual but also understand the larger influencers of health -- of which gun violence is most emphatically one. As medical professors, we would fail our students -- and our patients - if we expected any less.

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Finding Comfort in War and Peace

Over the past 15 years, Yiyun Li, a Chinese-American author, has read War and Peace at least a dozen times. Her hardback copy of Leo Tolstoy's 1,200 - page saga bristles with colored notes, like some exotic lizard's spine. The novel is not just a masterclass in fiction, Ms. Li believes, but a cure for     1    . At the most difficult times in her life, she says, she has turned to it again and again, reassured by its "    2    " in the face of uncertainty.

War and Peace - originally     3     The Year 1805 - is widely considered the world's greatest novel. It is also among the most daunting(令人敬畏的), acknowledged Richard Pevear, one of its translators, "as     4     as Russia itself." Its huge canvas(画布)encompasses(包含)not just Napoleon's wars against the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires from 1805 to 1812, but a cast whose actions and emotions span the breath of human consciousness. As a literary critic has noted, Tolstoy is the supreme novelist of human conflicts. His epic(史诗)is a(n)     5     examination of how people respond to the pressure of both wars and ordinary life.

So large is Tolstoy's world, Ms. Li reckoned, that there could be no better companion for people     6     in isolation. She thought of virtual book club to sustain readers through the lockdown. Participants around the globe would plough through this book together and share their thoughts on social media. It would be an anchor in     7     times. To their amazement, when it began in mid-March 3,000 people on six continents signed up.

Other book clubs have     8     up to discuss great literature during the pandemic. But Tolstoy's novel reflects the atmosphere of life in quarantine better. Its     9     structure, shifting between battlefields and the salons of Russian high society, mirrors the disorienting split in readers' own attention - between their own personal, stilled states and the calamity(灾祸)    10     outside.