Rebecca Lipton
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RL: You really have to do the detective work. One person smokes all their life and dies of old age at 100; someone else smokes five years and they’re done. There’s no doubt smoking causes lung cancer, but other risk factors are involved too. Chronic diseases usually come from processes and exposures that start years before the disease ever shows up. Figuring those out is what makes it fun. AIDS isn’t like that–it’s pretty much syphilis with a different germ. There’s nothing new to learn there.
HH: Isn’t diabetes really two diseases?
HH: Why is it important to have a large number?
HH: I see that you published one paper where you were able to break down the incidence of childhood diabetes in Chicago according to what month the children were born in, and it was somewhat better to be born in October.
HH: You mean I can’t just write that you’ve found the cause of Type 1 diabetes?
