Counseling in medical genetics / Sheldon C. Reed.

  • Reed, Sheldon C. (Sheldon Clark), 1910-2003.
Date:
1963
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: Counseling in medical genetics / Sheldon C. Reed. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    chapter 2 WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS? Counseling in human genetics is highly stimulating be¬ cause of the incredible variety of the problems. A representa¬ tive of the Roman Catholic Church inquires as to the probability that a lad with a family history of epilepsy will develop the disease. If the chance is great, the Church would not accept him for training for the priesthood. A welfare agency wants to know whether a child that is to be born to a brother-sister union is likely to be normal, and whether or not the child should be placed for adoption. A couple have had an albino baby and wish to know what chance there is of a repetition of this mis¬ fortune. A young woman wants to know what chance she has of developing Huntington's chorea, the disease which changed her father from a stalwart man-mountain into a demented shaking mass of protoplasm. An obstetrician has delivered two babies with spina bifida for one patient. He would like to make sure that this unpleasant situation won't occur again at the conclusion of his patient's third pregnancy. A physician and his wife have a baby boy with harelip and cleft palate. They had never thought that this would happen to them and wonder whether it can possibly happen again. The counselor has to advise himself when the antibodies that cause erythroblastosis in the child appear in the blood of his wife. 6