After his heart attack last December, Rabbi Daniel Siegel had two stents implanted in his blocked coronary arteries, and he started on a course of drugs to prevent further clots from forming. It was Siegel’s second heart attack in a little over five years, and each time his doctors prescribed him the same anti-clotting medicine:…
Regulatory hurdles, along with dosing problems, have come to plague a new class of cancer drugs that showed highly encouraging results in early research. Those obstacles have frustrated breast and ovarian cancer patients who are carriers of cancer-causing mutations, particularly prevalent among Ashkenazi Jews, and for whom it was hoped the medicines would prove especially…
From the hulking Willamette meteorite to the sparkling Star of India sapphire, visitors to the American Museum of Natural History in New York are used to seeing unusual sights. But museum-goers last year were likely unprepared for the sight — and smell — of Rabbi Chaim Loike, as he walked past the ticket booths carrying…
For Ohio University senior Lauren Kahn, the most significant test of her college career wasn’t a term paper or a final exam. It was a quick swab on the inside of her cheek her sophomore year, an easy, painless way to gather genetic information for a national database of potential bone marrow donors. On February…
One in four people of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry is a carrier of at least one Jewish genetic disease. If both parents carry a recessive gene for the same disease, such as Tay-Sachs, each child has a 25% chance of having that disease. With such high risk factors in the Jewish community, many couples choose to…
Here is a list of instutions that provide treatment and support and testing for Jewish genetic diseases. Bachmann-Strauss Dystonia & Parkinson Foundation 551 Fifth Avenue, Suite 520 New York, NY 10176 (212) 682-9900 Fax: (212) 682- 6156 www.dystonia-parkinson.org Bachmann-Strauss Dystonia & Parkinson Foundation funds scientific research seeking to understand the causes of and find potential…
Below are diseases that are often screened for in Jewish couples who are planning to have children because of an elevated risk of carrying a recessive mutation. Researchers so far have identified many more genetic diseases affecting those of Ashkenazi heritage than those of Sephardic descent. Ashkenazi Disorders • Bloom’s Syndrome Bloom’s syndrome is a…
A year ago, Rabbi Jon Adland underwent genetic testing and discovered that he was positive for mutations on both BRCA1 and BRCA2 — the so-called breast cancer genes that raise the risk for breast and ovarian cancer, especially in Ashkenazi Jews, who are over 10 times more likely to have a BRCA mutation than those…
100% of profits support our journalism
