Trust Me, I’m Dr. Ozzy

Richter scale.

Now I know why.

Bearing in mind what Dr. Nathan said about those odds figures being a bit dodgy, here are some of the other interesting things he told me: I’m 6.13 times more likely than the average person to have alcohol dependency or alcohol cravings (er… yeah); 1.31 times more likely to have a cocaine addiction; and 2.6 times more likely to have hallucinations while taking cannabis (makes sense, although I was usually loaded on so many different things at the same time, it was hard to know what was doing what). Meanwhile, I scored low on the genes associated with heroin addiction (I was never addicted to street heroin, ’cos it made me throw up—a terrible waste of booze—but I did get very addicted to morphine for a long time). I also scored low for nicotine addiction, which is interesting, ’cos cigarettes were the first thing I gave up when I got sober.

To be completely honest with you, some of the stuff Dr. Nathan told me seemed a bit on the bleedin’ obvious side. I mean, if I’d have been the bloke who forked out $3 billion for the first test, I’m not sure I would have been too impressed when the doc told me, “Well, Mr Osbourne, Your PTPN11 gene is normal- ish—so you don’t have Noonan Syndrome.”

“What’s Noonan Syndrome?” I asked.

“A type of dwarfism.”

“So I’m not a dwarf?”

“No.”

“Oh. That’s a relief then.”

And like I said before, there are lot of things they just don’t know yet. For example: Dr. Nathan says I have 300,000 completely new “spellings” in my DNA—“Of course I do, I’m fucking dyslexic!” I told him—but they don’t really know what that means. “One of those never-seen-before things we found in your genome was a regulatory segment in your ADH4 gene, which metabolises alcohol,” said Dr. Nathan. “It could make you more able to break down alcohol than the average person. Or less able.” Given that I used to drink four bottles of cognac a day, I’m not sure anyone needs a Harvard scientist to get to the bottom of that particular mystery.

“We also found new disruptions in your TTN and CLTCL1 genes,” the doc went on. “The first one might be associated with anything from deafness to Parkinsonianism, while we know that the second one can affect brain chemistry. If you wanted to find out more about your addictive behaviour, that might not be a bad place to start.”

If anything tells you how far all this stuff has to come, that pretty much sums it up for me: I mean, if there’s a gene for addictive behaviour, you’d have thought that mine would be written in pink neon with a ribbon and a bow on top.

Of all the parts of my genome that make up who I am—from my Pompei ancestors to my snotty nose and the fact I’m ready to blast through the ceiling after one cup of coffee—it was the last thing Dr. Nathan told me that really stuck in my mind. “You have two versions of a gene known as COMT,” he said. “The first is often called the ‘warrior variant,’ and the second is known as the ‘worrier variant.’ A lot of people have one or the other—not both.” I suppose that makes me both a warrior and a worrier.

It reminded me of a time, years and years ago, when I was on holiday in Hawaii with this chick I knew. We were walking along a cliff-edge one day, and when I told her I was afraid of heights, she couldn’t believe it.

“I’m being serious,” I remember saying. “I’d get vertigo wearing your high heels.”

She just burst out laughing. I couldn’t work out what was so funny. Eventually, she said, “You don’t remember last night, do you? We were walking along this very same cliff and you ripped off your shirt and took a running jump. I don’t think you even looked to see if there were any rocks below. Luckily, you hit water. Then you wanted me to jump after you.”

Not being insane, she refused.

I always thought it was just the booze and drugs that made me do crazy things like that, even though I’ve always been a terrible hypochondriac, and in some ways quite an anxious and insecure person. But now I’m thinking it’s got more to do with my genes. Being a warrior—the crazy, Alamo-pissing, bat-eating Prince of Darkness—has made me famous. Being a worrier has kept me alive when some of my dearest friends never made it beyond their mid-twenties.

Before Dr. Nathan left, I told him my theory. He frowned, nodded a bit, squinted his eyes. Then he said, “Look, Mr. Osbourne, after studying your history, taking your blood, extracting your genes from the white cells, making them readable, sequencing them, analysing and interpreting the data using some of the most advanced technology available in the world today—and of course comparing your DNA against all the current research in the U.S. National Library of Medicine, not to mention the eighteenth revision of the public human reference genome—I think I can say with a good deal of confidence why you’re still alive.”

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

“Go on, then,” I said. “Spit it out.”

“Sharon,” he replied.

Dr. Ozzy’s Trivia Quiz: Mutant Strains

Find the answers—and tote up your score—here

1. Which of these creatures might have existed in real life years ago—thanks to a far-out genetic mutation?

a) Hobbits

b) Unicorns

c) Dragons

2. What was genetically special about Lakshmi Tatama when she was born in Bihar, India, in 2005?

a) She had four arms and four legs

b) She had a conjoined headless twin

c) She had three heads

3. What do scientists put in genetically altered salmon to help keep them alive in very cold water?

a) Antifreeze

b) Polar bear DNA

c) Special “alleles” that tell the fish to grow thicker skin

4. Scientists understand genetics because of this garden vegetable:

a) Carrots

b) Brussels sprouts

c) Peas

5. The world’s first cloned sheep, Dolly, was named in honour of…

a) One of the scientists who created her

b) Dolly Parton’s tits

c) Doncaster Polytechnic

CHAPTER NOTES: BLAME IT ON THE DNA