Aggregated News
Editor's note: Robert Klitzman is a professor of psychiatry and director of the Masters of Bioethics Program at Columbia University. He is author of "Am I My Genes?: Confronting Fate and Family Secrets in the Age of Genetic Testing."
(CNN) -- "It's a miracle," she told me. "We can now have a baby that won't have Huntington's disease. I thought I'd never be able to have any kids -- because of the disease." Her father had died from this disorder, which results from a gene mutation. She feared that she might have the mutation, too. But she was too scared to undergo testing for it. She also worried that if she had it, she might pass it on to her children.
This disease causes severe neurological and psychiatric problems, and eventual death at around the same age as one's parent died of it -- usually in one's 40s or 50s. If a parent has the disease, each child has a 50% chance of inheriting it.
Woody Guthrie, the singer and songwriter, died of this illness. His children then...
(CNN) -- "It's a miracle," she told me. "We can now have a baby that won't have Huntington's disease. I thought I'd never be able to have any kids -- because of the disease." Her father had died from this disorder, which results from a gene mutation. She feared that she might have the mutation, too. But she was too scared to undergo testing for it. She also worried that if she had it, she might pass it on to her children.
This disease causes severe neurological and psychiatric problems, and eventual death at around the same age as one's parent died of it -- usually in one's 40s or 50s. If a parent has the disease, each child has a 50% chance of inheriting it.
Woody Guthrie, the singer and songwriter, died of this illness. His children then...