so this week in my research ethics class (that i have to take for the grant), the topic was epidemiology (roughly, the study of diseases in populations. e.g. the spread of SARS in toronto). it so happens that there is a big project going on in iceland right now to link up, into a gigantic database, information on icelanders' genetics, geneology, and medical history. iceland is, in case you didn't know, just about the perfect place to do this sort of thing, because (a) they have complete geneological information on almost every icelander who has ever lived (only about 1.2 million people), (b) they have kept medical histories of every icelander for the last few generations, and (c) icelanders are a nearly homogeneous population (originally, i believe there were two settling populations, the celts and the norse, but they've been interbreeding ever since).

anyway, this database project is fraught with ethical issues. one is that they are working under a "presumed consent" model, meaning that they will assume you consent to have your records entered into this database and plundered for scientific purposes unless you fill out a form telling them otherwise. (but what about kids, or the mentally ill, who may not be able to withdraw their information?) the second is that the company, while proclaiming that its database will improve iceland's health care industry, is actually going to benefit them more than anyone.

but. the cool thing about all this talk of iceland is really icelandic names. several years ago i heard a baroque recorder player named thordis adelsteinsd�ttir, and was forever in love with icelandic names. thordis, daughter of adelstein (adelstein: adel=noble, stein=stone). her brother halfdan adelsteinsson. (i just made that up. i don't know if she had a brother at all, or if his name was halfdan). get it? the surnames are the father's given name plus either -son or -d�ttir, depending on whether you are a man or woman! so how do people know who's in what family? that's where the insanely complete geneological information comes in! three cheers for crazy icelandic familial record-keeping! hip hip hooray! hip hip hooray! hip hip hooray! of course, it doesn't hurt that there are only a quarter of a million icelanders, total, half of whom live in reykjavik, and most of whom are related to each other.

nifty thing that i just found out, by wandering through the icelandic given names: english has often transliterated as a 'd' what is actually a '�' (letter name: eth. sound: the th- sound in 'that'.) so, the god we all know and love as odin is actually, in icelandic, called o�inn (othin). likewise, the name i mentioned above, adelsteinsd�ttir, is actually a�elsteinsd�ttir (athelsteinsd�ttir). so there, english.

second nifty thing i just learned: the icelandic phone book is alphabetized by first name. wheeeeee!