Shadows of Lancaster County by Mindy Starns Clark

Author:Mindy Starns Clark [Clark, Mindy Starns]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Romance, Adult, Contemporary
ISBN: 9781602853980
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers
Published: 2009-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

After that were what appeared to be pages of old medical files. Judging from the font, the text had been typed on a typewriter, and the first one was dated March 1991. Doug had drawn arrows pointing to the date, the patient’s name, and the very first sentence of the doctor’s notes: Newborn presents with Wolfe-Kraus syndrome. Have enrolled in study.

The rest of that page and the next two pages were simply dated entries written by a doctor that described the newborn’s series of office visits that took place over the next several years. I skimmed the entries, and it looked to me as though the patient had a disorder and was given some sort of procedure that appeared to be moderately successful in treating it. The effects of the procedure seemed to fade, however, because it had to be repeated every few months, something that the doctor did not seem happy about. The final entry, which was circled, said: Patient has been withdrawn from study due to religious objections of Amish parents, who indicate they have been feeling conflicted about “tampering with God’s will” in the matter of their child (i.e., if God wanted this cure to work, we wouldn’t have to keep doing it over and over). Parents have been counseled as to the effects of discontinuance, e.g., WKS symptoms will return in full. Patient discharged on this date, November 12, 1994. All data from this subject has been included in summary reports. File closed, HU, MD.

“ ‘HU, MD.’ is that Harold Updyke, MD?”

“Yep.”

“I don’t quite understand. What’s Wolfe-Kraus syndrome? What study is this referring to?”

“WKS is a rare genetic disorder, one that plagues some of the Amish in the area. In the late eighties, Dr. Updyke isolated the missing gene that causes the disorder, and from 1991 to 1994 he conducted an FDA-approved study that explored various treatment options.”

“Treatment options. You mean tampering with genes.”

“Yes. For the study described there in the file, he used the same technique that French Anderson pioneered the year before to treat SCID.”

“French Anderson? SCID?” I asked, shaking my head. It was all too much, too fast.

“Sorry, French was another bigwig in the field of DNA research. In 1990, he treated some kids who had severe combined immunodeficiency by removing cells from the patients, growing them in the lab, inserting the missing genes into the cells, and then reinserting them into the patients’ bodies.”

“Is that what’s meant by gene therapy?”

“Yes, that’s the most common approach, replacing a missing or nonfunctional gene with a normal one by inserting it into a nonspecific location within the genome. Geneticists may also choose to swap genes through homologous recombination or selective reverse mutation. Or they can regulate the degree to which an abnormal gene is turned off.”

“Okay. I understood about ten percent of what you just said.”

“Sorry. In plain English, the hardest part of gene manipulation is getting the genes back into the body and making sure that they go to the right place and do the right thing once they get there.

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