I'll put $300 on Diabetes

October 31, 2006 10:52 AM

Your Disease Risk is an interesting new website that quantifies your risk of contracting various diseases. From a Wall Street Journal story on the site: "The site goes beyond the standard questions about age, cholesterol and family history and explores the variety of lifestyle choices, environmental issues and other factors that can influence health risk. The questions are based on risk factors that have been established through credible scientific studies."
posted by bove (18 comments total)

Here is a link to the WSJ story, but I think you need a subscription to view it.

The WSJ story gives more detail about the site including that it allows you to calculate your risk for:
12 different cancers
heart disease
stroke
diabetes
osteoporosis

There are other websites that have risk calculators including the AMA, and The Cancer Institute, but this site appears to be the most comprehensive and useful.
posted by bove at 10:59 AM on October 31, 2006

You busted it.
posted by biffa at 11:01 AM on October 31, 2006

Either the site is painfully slow, or it's being Mefi'd -- I can't get past the first question. Even if it were quick, though, 16 questionnaires is a bit much to get through. It would be swell if there was one questionnaire to assess the risk of all the listed diseases.
posted by amro at 11:03 AM on October 31, 2006

It's offline now.
posted by rhiannon at 11:09 AM on October 31, 2006

Answer: You. In the study. Carpal Tunnel.
posted by hal9k at 11:16 AM on October 31, 2006

Damn. I thought I was going to be all clever and check my risk of diabetes, thinking the results were sure to be interesting since I'm already diabetic. But the third question is: "Have you ever been told you have diabetes?"
posted by scottreynen at 11:23 AM on October 31, 2006

Due to a high volume of traffic as a result of a Wall Street Journal article, the Your Disease Risk site is temporarily offline.
Please try again later.

We apologize for the inconvenience.
posted by octothorpe at 11:29 AM on October 31, 2006

Blu'ed
posted by craven_morhead at 11:35 AM on October 31, 2006

No love there, they claim it's the WSJ article, when we know it's the blue.
posted by OmieWise at 11:41 AM on October 31, 2006

The first thing I thought when I saw there "logo" was "sponsored by Centrum Complete"

Your Disease Risk Logo

Centrum's Logo
posted by mrnutty at 12:17 PM on October 31, 2006

"there logo"?! Ouch, of course, I meant "their".
posted by mrnutty at 12:19 PM on October 31, 2006

How morbid! ^^

I was about to type Nirvana.
posted by kayalovesme at 1:38 PM on October 31, 2006

Man, I'm impressed with Harvard's technology and/or sysadmins. Might have been better to put it on Geocities.
posted by zek at 1:38 PM on October 31, 2006

working link
posted by leotrotsky at 2:33 PM on October 31, 2006

Due to a high volume of traffic as a result of a Wall Street Journal article, the Your Disease Risk site is temporarily offline.
Please try again later.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Please visit the Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention website for related information.



This doesn't bode well for me.
posted by winks007 at 2:43 PM on October 31, 2006

No estimates for oral lymphatic, brain, testicular, bone, ocular nor blood cancers, from leontrotsky's link. It would've been nice to see the extra data...
posted by Smart Dalek at 2:47 PM on October 31, 2006

I'm so disappointed: so far I'm at low risk for diabetes, heart disease and stroke. I don't want to live forever! Maybe I should hope for brain cancer from spending half my life in front of a monitor, eh?
posted by davy at 7:53 PM on October 31, 2006

I hope the site is still down. A morbid curiosity tempts me to use it, but the concept reminds me too much of nagging doctors: "And you know that drinking formaldehyde isn't helping you any, right...?"
posted by UbuRoivas at 10:10 PM on November 1, 2006