Predicting Things

I once called a colleague Radar O'Reilly for her knack of doing things before I even ask for them. "I don't know who that is," she said in response to my email. Realizing my blunder, I quickly called her and tiptoed through my reason saying she, like the short 1970s M.A.S.H. TV character, had a knack of doing things before even being asked, like predicting what I'd need.  "Well that makes me feel better," she said. "I was worried because I looked up his picture online." Predicting things to do before being told to do them like Radar is no small feat.  There's quite a lot of that innovation these days in predicting disease, like genetic tests and imaging that can mark what's to come even when you have no idea and feel great. You can figure out stuff, predict a condition at its earlier point, and plan your future.  There's a lot of attention to this so-called predictive analytics era, particularly from those who have responsibility for paying for it, like is there utility to the test, will it tell us something we already know, is it necessary even if there's family history? These are fair questions, but maybe a bigger one is will the results actually change behavior?  Would the answer give people enough information to adjust how they live?  I mean, these genetic testing and imaging advances are nice until they aren't. We asked a few thousand people and about half of them don't even want to know - "Nah, not interested - no test is going to stop Jack Daniels from visiting every night," said Charlie, a 57-year-old from southern Missouri.  52% do, but half of them say they probably wouldn't change - "if it were predicting cancer, I might stop using the pesticide on my lawn but I do like the lawn really green," said Marge, 49, of eastern Pennsylvania. I'm on the fence personally. I just had a coronary calcium scan using CT imaging that "shocked" my internist. My score was so high that he summoned me to his office, prescribed a statin and referred me to a cardiologist - this all from a doctor who until now described my health profile as "unremarkable," that I'd pass a stress test easily.  I guess I'm happy I know, I think, but I'm not sure my behavior is going to change.  Perhaps this is precisely why insurers are reluctant to cover these advances at least not without oversight. Parents are in a similar position I suppose.  Like on Wednesday, Tommy asked me if he could use my credit card to buy a $77 kit to diagnose ph levels in our soil. "If it's higher than a 7, it's high sodium," Tommy said. "I know, I researched it." Why in the world do we need to diagnose it - "because I'm trying to find the best area to plant a garden so we don't have to keep buying blueberries - and if it's more than 7 it won't work."  I asked him if the soil was chalky and he said, "yeah yeah - so what does that mean?"  It means we just diagnosed the soil kiddo. It's not going to grow us blueberries, and we're not going to spend $77. How 'bout dem apples!