Canon questions and possible beta request

[caduceus03.livejournal.com]

Hello, newbie here!

So I got linked to elspethdixon and seanchai 's Classic-verse, loved it, promptly read through all their stories, discovered crimsonquills was in the fandom and devoured all her stories, and then came over to the comm to start exploring. Phew - be proud of yourselves: you guys totally sucked me in to the Steve/Tony.

So my request: I always promised myself not to write in a fandom where I'm not familiar with the source material. Unfortunately, I have several plotbunnies that won't leave me alone, but no time to to read decades worth of canon backlog. So I was hoping some lovely person would be willing to be my beta and help me with canon details and check characterization. I'm a fairly slow and non-prolific writer, so it wouldn't be a huge time drain, I don't think. Or at the least, would you guys answer a few questions I have at the moment?

1) What exactly was Tony's relationship with his parents, especially his father? I've picked up vague suggestions that it wasn't exactly a congenial relationship, but could someone explain it a bit more to me?

2) I saw one of my fellow newbie's questions about when the Avengers found out about Tony being Iron Man, but when did they find out about his heart problems?

3) About the Extremis and cancer... errr, is that just comic book pseudoscience? All I've been able to find is the scan in the comments here which doesn't really explain anything and Wikipedia's entry that says that "the Extremis enhancement speeds up a person's repair process and hence the body's cells died and regenerated at a faster rate. This effectively made Tony Stark immune to cancer and gave him his 'healing factor'." I'm curious because I'm pretty sure that that mechanism would actually make Tony more susceptible to cancer (I could be wrong, I'm only a medical student, but I think that would be the case). Any other info from the comics regarding the subject?

Thanks!