Your Genes, Your Health: A Critical Family Guide That Could Save Your Life

418 Pages·2011·2.81 MB·English

by  Aubrey Milunsky MD DSc

Your Genes, Your Health
Books by Aubrey Milunsky, M.D., D.Sc.
Know Your Genes
Choices, Not Chances
How to Have the Healthiest Baby You Can
Heredity and Your Family’s Health
Your Genetic Destiny , Perseus Publishing
And Medical Texts (as Author, Co-Author, or Editor)
Th e Prenatal Diagnosis of Hereditary Disorders
Th e Prevention of Genetic Disease and Mental Retardation
Coping with Crisis and Handicap
Clinics in Perinatology
Advances in Perinatal Medicine
Genetics and the Law (3 Editions)
Genetic Disorders and the Fetus: Diagnosis, Prevention and
Treatment (6 editions)
Your Genes, Your Health
A Critical Family Guide Th at
Could Save Your Life
A ubrey Milunsky, MD, DSc
1
1

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Copyright © 2012 by Aubrey Milunsky, M.D., D.Sc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Milunsky, Aubrey.
Your genes, your health : a critical family guide that could save your life / Aubrey Milunsky.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-19-979207-8 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Medical genetics—Popular works. I. Title.
RB155.M55 2011
616'.042—dc22 2010049059

Printing number: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
TO JEFF.
For the joy of being your Dad.
For the pride in your achievements.
For the admiration of you as a father.
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If, of all the words of tongue and pen,
Th e saddest are, “It might have been,”
More sad are these we daily see:
“It is, but hadn’t ought to be.”
— Francis Bret Harte
in “Mrs. Judge Jenkins”
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contents
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xv
1. Why and What You Should Know 3
2. Too Many or Too Few Chromosomes 14
3. X’s and Y’s: Th e Sex Chromosomes 26
4. Chromosome Rearrangements 39
5. Blueprints: You and Your Genes 50
6. How Genes are Transmitted 65
7. Prenatal Diagnosis 84
8. When Good Cells Go Wrong 105
9. Matters of the Heart 126
10. Consequences of Failure to Diagnose 141
11. Genes Gone Missing 151
12. Earlier and More Severe Genetic Disorders 164
13. Th e Determination to Have a Healthy Child 173
14. Irrevocability and Acceptance 183
15. Ancestral Genetic Burdens 193
16. Puzzling Fevers 213
17. Bleeding and Clotting 220
18. Blood Vessels that Burst 239
19. Brain Connections and Disconnections 250
20. Skin: A Mirror to the Brain 266
21. Genes with Signatures 275
22. Maternal Inheritance and Inevitability 283
ix