HARTFOR D HOSPITAL

   

June 2, 1972

Ann Landers

c/o The Hartford Courant
285 Broad Street
Hartford, Connecticut

Dear Ann Landers:

I hope you will qualify to your readers your genetic advice to
‘Bored with Fairy Tales," as it was unsound, deceptively reassuring, and
you employed inappropriate examples. It is empirical experience with large
series of first cousin marriages that has led geneticists to estimate that
on average each of us ("normal people’) carries the equivalent of eight
deleterious recessive genes. Each pregnancy of a first cousin mating is at
a5 - 10% risk of producing a retarded, deformed or otherwise hereditarily
diseased child. While the couple may be willing to accept this risk it is
not inconsiderable, and the ancient tabus of many societies are based on it.
Moreover, recessive diseases (such as PKU, cystic fibrosis) typically occur
in one or more siblings but are not expressed in their parents or other
relatives and so the family history is usually not helpful in warning of
danger. Of course, a family history of hereditary disease usually does
increase tne risk of that particular disease.

+
Hemophilia, which you cited, is a sex linked recessive disease which
unaffected ‘‘carrier’’ women pass to half of their sons. Carriers are equally
likely to produce hemophiliac sons by unrelated as by first cousin husbands.

Genetic counseling frequently involves consideration of several complex
factors not at the fingertips of most physicians unless they have made a
special point of it. Interested persons, including physicians, may locate
an authority in their locale by consulting the Genetics Services International

Directory available from The National Foundation — flarch of Dimes, 800 Second

Avenue, Wew York City, 10017.

Sincerely yours,
elt 6, he 2.

William E. Clark, II, M.b.
WEC :bw Department of Patihology

Please sign me - Physician in liartford