Posted on 02/06/2006 8:47:48 PM PST by neverdem
In 1965, when her 10-month-old son, David, started having seizures, Joan Stokes's excitement at being a first-time mother gave way to terror.
"I couldn't imagine what was wrong," she said.
The pediatrician was equally baffled. David's condition was not a result of a bacterial infection — it failed to respond to antibiotics — and tests for an array of common genetic disorders came back negative.
It was not until Ms. Stokes began discussing David's illness with her mother, her cousins and other relatives that she realized she belonged to a seemingly cursed lineage.
"I had a brother that died in infancy who I knew nothing about," Ms. Stokes said, "and my mother told me, 'Oh, your brother had the same thing.' "
Other long-hidden stories of baby boys shaking uncontrollably and then dying began to surface — a cousin here, a great-uncle there — and it became clear that the family's ill-fated heritage stretched back to the 19th century.
David, though, clung to life, and a further round of testing revealed that he had low levels of parathyroid hormone.
Suspecting there was a problem with the parathyroid glands, small glands in the neck that ordinarily regulate calcium metabolism, doctors at St. Louis Children's Hospital gave David high doses of vitamin D to raise his blood calcium to normal levels.
The results were immediate and startling: David's seizures stopped, and unlike many of his male forebears, he grew and thrived, coasting through childhood without significant developmental delays.
A second afflicted son, born two years later, did similarly well on the vitamin D treatment.
Still, the genetic cause of the boys' rare disorder, known as X-linked recessive hypoparathyroidism, remained a conundrum. Michael Whyte of Washington University, one of the Stokes children's doctors, was determined to locate the chromosomal source of the illness.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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I am waiting for daveloneranger and other FR creationists to tell us that this is "junk science" that violates Genesis.
Six posts later we will see that evolution is associated with nazis, stalin, communism, moral decay, dental decay, liberals, and the decline of western civilization.
Do you know that the basic meaning of evolution is the same as development?
So what to do?
Eventually, we'll have to recognize that we must do some level of gene therapy, otherwise the human race will not be able to live without constant medicine.
It does risk abuse, but I think the only method is to allow parents the ability to chose which genetic pattern their child will have. Yes, some will scream for moral reasons, and others in paranoia about Nazi past atrocities. But what choice do we have? We either accept that modern medicine will evolve humans that depend on constant medical attention. Or we go to the next level of evolution, and chose our children's genes.
Take your pick.
Read later bookmark.
btt
This science doesn't support evolution at all. It supports devolution. This is another harmful mutation resulting in deformed and malfunctioning glands. Where are the beneficial mutations?
Oh that's right, Sickle Cell Anemia which by crippling half the red blood cells makes a person less susceptible to blood born diseases. Nice one. It's like saying a child born without arms is immune to carpal tunnel syndrome.
And this science doesn't depend on Evolution in any way. You don't have to assume man came from apes to scientifically diagnose this. Look at what they did. They ruled out bacteria. Found a trend in the family indicating genetics but not evolution. Found a specific deficiency and began aggressively treating the deficiency. <
"Six posts later we will see that evolution is associated with nazis, stalin, communism, moral decay, dental decay, liberals, and the decline of western civilization. "
If you say so.
It is sad when they do this. They live in their own little minds and then refuse to open them for fear they might have to admit they were wrong.
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