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Enlisting Rabbis in the Push for Screening

By Talia Bloch

“My wife and I were married by two rabbis, one Conservative and the other Reform, and neither of them gave us any information about Jewish genetic diseases.” So begins the story of Lawrence Sernovitz, himself now an associate rabbi at the Old York Road Temple-Beth Am in Abington, Pa. A little more than a year later, in September 2008, Sernovitz and his wife had a baby boy born with familial dysautonomia, a rare recessive genetic disorder essentially found exclusively among Ashkenazi Jews.Read More

Test, and Then Test Again, Experts Advise

By Lauren F. Friedman

With additional mutations for genetic diseases continuing to be discovered among Ashkenazi Jews, genetic screening advocates are urging people to get tested for newly identified diseases, even if they have already been tested for other diseases.Read More

Accessibility vs. Expertise: Direct-to-Consumer Testing Sparks Debate

By Gabrielle Birkner

Drugstores stock tests that gauge blood sugar levels, predict ovulation, ascertain pregnancy and determine whether illegal drugs are in the bloodstream. And back in May, the Walgreens pharmacy chain announced that it would offer testing kits of another kind: ones intended to detect genetic diseases.Read More

$1.5 Million for Atlanta Screening

By Laurie Stern

A two-year pilot program that promotes genetic disease awareness and offers carrier screening will be introduced in Atlanta as a result of a $1.5 million grant from the Marcus Foundation, the philanthropy of Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus.Read More

Therapy Shows Promise in Trials for Hereditary Cancer Patients

By Karen Iris Tucker

An emerging therapy that attacks cancer cells continues to show promise, most recently in two international studies on women who have breast and ovarian cancer and are carriers of cancer-causing mutations particularly prevalent among Ashkenazi Jews.Read More

Rare Connector: Bringing Bloom’s Sufferers Together

By Ezra Glinter

For a long time, Sheryl Grossman felt like she was alone in the world. Growing up in Flossmoor, Ill., she didn’t understand why she was so small, and why she had to see so many doctors. At the age of 14, her parents told her that she had Bloom’s syndrome, a rare autosomal recessive genetic disorder that affects cells’ normal process of DNA repair, resulting in small body size and a high vulnerability to diseases such as cancer, diabetes and immune disorders.Read More

Lawsuit Filed Over Familial Dysautonomia Genetic Patent

By Nadja Spiegelman

A lawsuit now working its way through federal court is adding an interesting twist to the heated debate over genetic patenting.Read More

Rabbis and Halacha Grapple With Advances in DNA Technology

By Debra Nussbaum Cohen

Advances in genetic analysis and its medical applications are bringing unprecedented, if uneven, change to the world of Jewish law. Most often, the matter of genetics is considered in the context of issues on either end of life’s spectrum: those that relate to fertility and to the identification of post-mortem human remains.Read More

Court Ruling Could Affect Genetic Patenting

By Nadja Spiegelman

A federal court ruling striking down patents on two cancer-causing genes has the potential to shake up the world of genetic patenting.Read More

A Tough Year for Gaucher Sufferers

By Laurie Stern

It has been a year filled with anxiety, fear and disappointment for sufferers from Gaucher disease, who are continuing to deal with the fallout from last year’s shutdown of a pharmaceutical plant.Read More


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