If hospitals are buckling under the strain now, what would happen during an influenza pandemic? The scary fact is that, when it comes to bed allocation or the dishing out of anti-virals, some of us may be at the back of a very long queue.

A Canadian study of patients who contracted severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) offers useful pointers on who should be sent to the back and who should be pushed to the front. It involves genetic discrimination and seems about the fairest way of working out who should get preferential treatment.

When your body fights an infection, it produces interferon. This puts the body on alert and prompts an immune response (lab-produced interferon is widely used to treat cancers). However, people differ in their production of this protein. The study, conducted at the University Health Network, in Toronto, found that the pattern of interferon activity that each patient showed was closely linked to how sick he became.

Blood samples taken from patients when they first fell ill during the 2003 Sars outbreak were run through a genetic analysis that looked at the proteins produced by thousands of genes. The researchers identified two distinct patterns in the way interferon was expressed by genes. Patients who suffered mild to moderate symptoms showed one pattern; patients who fell severely ill or later died displayed the other.

“This study suggests that information on how a Sars patient expresses these genes during their illness can be used to identify who may require more specific treatment,” says Mark Cameron, the lead author of the study writing in the Journal of Virology. “Also, we think that these patterns may apply to illnesses caused by flu viruses and that they should be considered in pandemic influenza preparedness, once we have done the work necessary.”

In this country, there has been much debate about prioritising care on the basis of age. Yet older people, who have the longest history of flu exposure, may be the least vulnerable. Now we learn that good genes will help the lucky. Never has a policy of genetic discrimination seemed more equitable.

I’ve just received the perfect summer read, which is a bit annoying since I came back from my break a week ago. In Why People Believe Weird Things, Michael Shermer, a columnist for Scientific American and well-known sceptic, delves into the fashionable Dawkinsian territory of irrational belief and superstition.

He is a master of the art of gentle, amused debunking; he is less shouty and smug than others who preach similar good sense (yes, I do mean Richard Dawkins, although I noted a softer tone in his recent Channel 4 series). Rather than railing at the gullibility of the masses, Shermer probes, with compassionate curiosity, the more interesting question of why smart people cling to bizarre beliefs. I’m afraid I can’t reveal more: that would be bad karma.

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