Transcript: Frenetic Genetics

Nathaniel Pearson: We did find in your genome you have an interesting variant that’s associated with glucose galactose absorption.

Gates: I am severely lactose intolerant.

Hugh Young Reinhoff, Jr., MD: You had variants in genes that are know to be, to play a role in epiphyseal development.

Gates: My slipped epiphysis.

Pearson: Exactly.

Gates: My broken hip when I was fourteen.

Pearson: Just looking at your list of variants we would have predicted that you wouldn’t be going bald very fast.

Gates: What’s it look like up there. I mean, it’s like skin back there (points to head).

Scientists: I see hair. Yeah I see hair.

Narration: I was astonished at how much these guys knew about me. The texture of my hair and how much of it i could expect to keep, my fractured right hip, my tortured relationship with milk and ice cream – and thousands of other physical traits —they could see it all by analyzing my DNA. But what about my propensity for diseases?

Joseph Thakuria, MD: You do have a sickle cell trait which has no consequence whatsoever if you don’t have the mutations. We didn’t find any mutations in genes that cause early onset Alzheimer’s.

Gates: Thank you Jesus (laughs). So what you said was, I’m OK?

Thakuria: You're OK.

Gates: Good.

Narration: I also learned that I’m fairly resistant to malaria and am highly tolerant of caffeine – both traits I got from my father.