Talia Bloch
By Talia Bloch
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Culture The Other Jewish Genetic Diseases
Randall Belinfante was a bit baffled. When he and his wife went to take blood tests in preparation for starting a family in 2003, he discovered that the screening included a panel of tests for Ashkenazic Jewish genetic disorders. But Belinfante is Sephardic. “We told them at the time that we were not Ashkenazi, but…
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Culture Israeli Scientist Adapts Antibiotic That May Fight Genetic Disease
A team of researchers in Israel has made a breakthrough in modifying an until-now highly toxic antibiotic so that it might one day be used to repair defective genes that cause diseases such as cystic fibrosis, Usher syndrome, Duchenne muscular dystrophy and even some cancers. Timor Baasov, a professor of chemistry at the Technion-Israel Institute…
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Culture New Program Targets Persian Jewish Disorders
The United States recently got its first genetic screening program targeting a non-Ashkenazic Jewish community. On July 12, the Medical Genetics Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles launched its Persian Jewish Genetic Screening Program. The program kicked off with an afternoon of education and free screening at Sinai Temple, a local Conservative synagogue…
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Culture Methuselah’s Children
‘It’s important to be calm, not to get excited. It’s not good for the heart,” centenarian Fred Feuerberg said. “And I never ate much. I never overate.” Feuerberg, who turned 100 in May, was sitting in his spacious apartment in Fort Lee, N.J., explaining what has allowed him to reach such a ripe old age…
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Culture One Big, Happy Family
Historically speaking, Jews have hardly been strangers to the art of drawing sharp distinctions among themselves. But according to a mounting body of scientific evidence, Jews — genetically speaking, at least — may have more in common than anyone previously suspected. A year ago, Michael Seldin, a geneticist at the University of California Davis School…
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Culture Building a Memorial From Strands of DNA
More than six decades after the victims of the Holocaust met their fateful end, a new genetically based initiative could give some of the departed the last respects they never received. The initiative, called the DNA Shoah Project, has as its goal the identification of human remains being unearthed in European towns and cities in…
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News Fertility Doctor Helps Lift a Taboo
Tucked away in a far corner of Brooklyn, a graceful brick building houses an open secret among the Orthodox: a fertility clinic that sensitively caters to their needs as observant Jews. Earlier this year, its director and founder, Dr. Richard Grazi, reached out to the wider public with the publication of “Overcoming Infertility: A Guide…
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Culture San Francisco To Get a Genetics Center
Four years ago, Michael Rancer, an administrator at the University of California, Berkeley, lost his son to familial dysautonomia, a rare genetic disorder found among Ashkenazic Jews that causes the nervous system to deteriorate. Today, Rancer is one of the prime movers behind a proposed new center for Jewish genetic diseases in San Francisco that…
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