Realist Pam Ayers sees deCODEme scan as gift
Pamela Ayers is a hair stylist who runs her own business. She says she is a firm believer in “fixing things before they need to be fixed.”
At 60, Pamela is now approaching the age at which her father passed on. Like him, she suffers from coronary artery disease yet Pamela is clearly more concerned about her family’s health than her own. Her brother Roy suffered a heart at 55 and has had 3 stents inserted. To exacerbate matters, he is, according to Pamela, “close to becoming diabetic.” Like heart disease, diabetes runs in Pamela’s family but when she discovered that she was affected, she was surprised to say the least. It was brother Roy who had been “overweight as a little child” and “drawn to anything sweet.” Moreover, Roy also became a smoker. Pamela feels she did all she could to live a healthy life:
“Well I didn’t do the same things. I’ve never smoked and I didn’t do these things that Roy did-but I got a lesson and it was a hard lesson.” Pam discovered that her genetic risk for having a stroke was very high. So, if it wasn’t her lifestyle that was putting her at risk, what was it?
Genetics vs environment
Pamela says her father was a firm believer in genetics and therefore “far ahead of his time.” When she was younger she did not agree with him. “He’d say ‘genetics, genetics, genetics’ and I’d say, `environment, environment, environment’ and adds “well, my daddy’s laughing now because he said genetics will come through. He said that if we get the outside, the color of our hair and eyes or our physical build, what makes us think we don’t get the inside, too? It’s passed down.”Pam has come round closer to her father’s point of view, but still places a great deal of emphasis on the impact of upbringing: “I feel we’re programmed as children as far as lifesyle is concerned. What you do in your family carries through. Sometimes, things change after we marry because our partners also bring their lifestyles with them, but we still have those same cravings we had as children.”
She says that detecting a tendency for obesity in our genetic makeup means we need to be doubly vigilant: “If children were tested early in life we could change things. Not everyone would listen, but there are a great many parents who would change their life-style to help their children.”
It is not just a question of fast food, either, says Pam: “I believe when you eat out you have choices and you need to choose where it is you eat out – the types of food that you eat but we make poor choices-fast, every thing’s fast, drive-through but it could be different. There could be drive-thrus that offer healthy food.”
She admits to having been brought up on some great home cooking where everyone ate “big lunches” and “big dinners.” Almost every meal contained potatoes and homemade bread. She says perceptively that her mother’s way of showing her love was to serve big meals. It was something she copied when she raised her own family, but that she realized eventually it wasn’t necessarily an example to follow: “Now I do things differently. I put salads out. We’re just as full and just as happy.”Why did she take the deCODEme test?
The list of inheritable diseases in Pam’s family is long: diabetes, coronary illness, cancer and obesity. On this last, she notes that most of her family members were engaged in a “lifelong battled with their weight but none of them won.” But even a background that looked this heavily weighted against her did not faze Pam. In fact, it had the reverse effect.
“It’s a wonderful thing to be able to find out this-it’s not something you want to hear but you don’t hide it either-you know you change your life-style.”
Her cautious but positive outlook enabled her to persuade one of her sons to take the test, along with other son’s two children. It transpired that her son is predisposed to the risk of type-2 diabetes (as is her 5-year-old grandson), while her 20-month grand-daughter seems to have a genetic tendency for coronary artery disease. Pam was concerned that this information might be burden to the children at such a young age, but insists at the same time that they live “a pretty good life” and that their parents do a lot of the right things already.
Is ignorance bliss or is it just ignorance?
“You can’t change things by ignoring them. I think we could almost get type-2 diabetics in hand at an early age if people were aware that this was done-in our infants-before they left the hospital even. I think we may not want to hear some of these things but I think it could change this country’s way of looking at things through this testing. Think of the money that could be saved if we were truly proactive. Who wouldn’t want this done?”
What about discovering our risk for diseases that have no cure at present?
“Well, people can live their life in fear or they can embrace it. You have to choose. Wouldn’t you want to do more in your life? I would. You know, if I knew that was something that was coming along, maybe I would think harder about trying to think of ways to make things easier for my family or to prepare along the way. I would go get educated on it. I would find out stages I was going to go through and I would say: `This is what we need to do when I get to this stage. And I would want my loved ones to know: It is OK.’
The way of the future
Serious, but almost alarmingly positive, Pam believes that it is only a matter of time before scanning our genes is completely accepted – even by the insurance companies and the health system:
I think our medical system in the United States is poor right now and badly run. But how can our insurance companies choose not to back something like this. I mean, they would spend less money on us in the end. Look at me. With what I’ve done with my life right now, I’m a better risk than the people they are insuring. How could they not embrace this? This is an opportunity for them not a punishment for us.
“I believe it is the way of the future. Even ten years ago, who would have thought that we would have all the advances we have today? People are often scared of things just because they’re new. It’s about how we educate people and how we make them feel about it. They need to feel comfortable with it.”
So far Pam has only been able to persuade one of her two sons to take the deCODEme scan and managed to allow the other to have his children tested. Not as high a success rate as she would have liked, but she believes the message of genetic scanning will eventually filter through:
“I’ve already helped my children. What a gift! I mean, most people don’t get it right now but if you give them time I think they will.”
