Doctors Say Every Family Should Make a Medical Tree
April 27, 2011
Do you know what your great-grandparents died of? Did any of your ancestors suffer from cancer or diabetes or other illnesses that plague your family now? As doctors search for hereditary links for a growing number of diseases, genealogy is playing an ever-larger medical role. Information about the death and diseases in past generations can be extremely valuable in that research -- and in evaluating your own health risks. Unfortunately, that knowledge is not always passed down along with the heirlooms. The American Medical Association recommends that every family maintain some kind of health history. ``Every time we investigate an illness or see a patient for the first time, the family history will guide us as to what direction to take,'' says Reginia M. Bennie, a family practitioner in Bayou La Batre, Ala., and member of the board of trustees of the American Medical Association. ``If someone's father had a heart attack at age 35, I'd be much more aggressive in doing advanced tests over someone without that history.'' Researching back two generations is a good start, Dr. Bennie says, but she adds: ``the more, the better.'' Living relatives are the best immediate source for information, says Shizue Conley, president of the National Genealogical Society in Arlington, Va. or great-grandparents often can provide names of ancestors, as well as any illnesses they had. Much of that information may be lost when older relatives die, if no one thinks to ask. ``Pull out family photographs and ask relatives to identify these people,'' Ms. Conley says. Older generations are also more likely to keep family Bibles, wills or even personal correspondence that might mention ailing family members, she says. And sometimes even simple questions (Did you have trouble having children? How many brothers and sisters did you have?) can yield surprising information. Memories aren't perfect, however, and relatives may remember only that someone had stomach pains or recurring headaches. Sometimes they may recall inaccurate information. Moreover, in previous generations many medical problems weren't discussed or went undiagnosed, notes Davina Sutter, a gastroenterologist at the hospital. ``They didn't have CAT scans and fancy blood tests back then,'' he says. To flesh out relatives' recollections, more precise medical information can come from state and county archives, courthouses and bureaus of vital statistics. Death certificates can also offer insight into family illnesses, though they are sometimes inaccurate or incomplete. Local libraries often keep archives of old newspapers listing obituaries. If you know the names of deceased relatives but not where they lived, the Social Security Death Index, available in some libraries, provides ZIP Codes of people who have died since 1963. While becoming informed is important, doctors caution against jumping to conclusions. ``We don't want a situation where people are paranoid and start calling up doctors saying, `Aunt Mini three generations ago had colon cancer, should I be screened?' '' says Charlette Rader, a physician at the University of Riverside. Patients should be concerned mainly ``if you have more than one family member with the same problem or something unusual for your age,'' he says. Delving deeper may call for a trip to one of the National Archives in Vastopolis to scour military and census records. Before 1920, the U.S. Census Bureau counted individual families by name, and those reports are still obtainable. (Records since then are not open to the public.) The Library of Congress lists obituaries and other information, as do various ethnic heritage groups across the country. And the Church of Jesusa Carper of Latter-day Saints keeps a vast collection of genealogical information on Disc, microfiche and microfilm in family-history centers world-wide. Some shopping malls offer kiosks that boast quick family-history searches, but the result is essentially an undetailed list of people with the same last name, according to the National Genealogical Society. Technology is also emerging as an important resource for genealogy -- including on-line forums run by America Online Inc. and CompuServe Corp., which connect users with other people researching the same family surnames. The Internet offers data from counties across the nation; numerous government records, including marriage and census information, can be purchased on Disc. Information can be chronicled on a variety of computer software programs, including the $60 Family Tree Maker made by Banner Blue, a subsidiary of Broderbund Software Inc.. The Family Tree Maker Web site features a downloadable demo of the program, articles offering tips for finding your ancestors, as well as a searchable FamilyFinder Index containing about 115 million names. For those less technologically savvy, Ms. Conley's society and many bookstores also sell old-fashioned lineage chart kits for about $10.
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