I have an impor­tant issue I’d like to put before the members;

It is vital that we begin adding med­ical infor­ma­tion to our genealog­i­cal data; In addi­tion to where and when rel­a­tives were born, mar­ried, and died, med­ical con­di­tions  should be included.  Even with cur­rent
tech­nol­ogy, this will surely mean the dif­fer­ence between life and death in some cases, and will assist the early diag­no­sis of genet­i­cally car­ried diseases.

This sort of knowl­edge prob­a­bly saved my life some years back; Know­ing my uncle had all his teeth pulled, one by one, before they real­ized it was his heart caus­ing the trou­ble, enabled me to under­stand what was hap­pen­ing to me and seek treat­ment early enough to pre­vent a heart attack when I sud­denly at the same age
of forty, woke up with strange pains across the back of my shoul­ders and in my lower jaw one night.

My wife’s aunt, 83 years old, upon see­ing my seven-year-old daugh­ter with a patch over her left eye to treat “lazy eye”, com­mented “I had that same eye patched at the same age.” Obvi­ously, this is a genetic
predispostion.

Any health data is poten­tially vital to show­ing a genetic redis­po­si­tion.  If enough of the same mark­ers show up in a num­ber of peo­ple, it sig­nals a red flag-a place to be espe­cially aware of.

So, I hope you will agree that pro­vi­sions need to be made for record­ing health data — what dis­eases a per­son has or had, includ­ing date of onset and symp­toms, and aller­gic or side effect reac­tions to
med­ica­tions. This should be done for mem­bers liv­ing and deceased, and listed in obit­u­ar­ies as well.

This would have the side ben­e­fit of bring­ing prac­ti­cal rel­e­vance to Gene­ol­ogy, mak­ing con­verts out of most of those who view it as strictly an odd hobby with no rel­e­vance to the present.

–Anthony Hoff­man