Twenty percent. You probably think I’m alluding to the economy, right? No, I’m talking about Jewish genetics, and that 20 percent isn’t a social class — it’s the fraction of Ashkenazi Jews who are carriers of at least one of 19 preventable genetic diseases.
If you knew your future child might be born with a genetic disease you could have prevented, would you prevent it? If you knew they might not live beyond early childhood, or that their quality of life would be dismal, wouldn’t you take every step possible to make sure that didn’t happen? What if you were that one in five, a carrier of a potentially life-threatening disease? Wouldn’t you want to know? Knowledge is power, as they say, and this isn’t one area I’d like to live in blissful ignorance.By Jessica Hanewinckel
