蜜芽传媒

Alan Johnston introduces dispatches from correspondents around the world, with wit, analysis and personal experience. In this edition: a gravely hypochondriac David Willis indulges in some of the predictive genetic tests which are changing American medicine, while Duncan Forgan in Ho Chi Minh City finds Vietnamese attitudes to eating dog meat are starting to cool.

Knowledge is power - but is it anxiety too?

California is now home to dozens of companies which claim their genetic tests can see into your medical future. All they need is a sample of some of your saliva. Then, they say, they can tell with some certainty what inherited diseases might lie in wait for you.

Our correspondent David Willis - an enthusiast for diagnostic medical technology if ever there was one - couldn't resist putting himself to the test.

Chowing down

Vietnam is changing. Its economy is growing fast, and it's opening more to the outside world. And as its people enrich themselves, some habits and tastes may change. There might well be differences over which customs should be consigned to the past, and which should be taken on into the future.

Duncan Forgan says that that argument is already playing out over one particular area of Vietnamese cuisine: the wide range of traditional dishes using dog meat.