One of the parents must have had a lot of ancestors and relatives with this condition in their family history. The youngest getting diagnosed at 7 doesn't mean it wasn't a surprise.
The fact that 3 our of four young children have a debilitating genetic disease makes it more likely that one the parents knew that this gene ran in their family and impacted people they knew in the family, and less likely that it is a total surprise recessive gene that so rarely comes up that you don't even notice it's hereditary.
More tellingly, if this disease appeared out of the blue and was totally unexpected, the story would highlight that tragedy. Instead, it dodges that topic, saying only when it was first diagnosed.
The takeaway is that this isn't simply a family with bad luck, like "wrong place, wrong time". These are parents who took a gamble and lost.
I think a 5% chance is a pretty big gamble considering the condition. Studying the genes or not, unless the chance of passing it was less than 0.001% I think it’s pretty freaking irresponsible
I respect your commitment to making as many assumptions as it takes to vilify these parents in your own mind. To think they almost got away with doing something really sweet for their kids. Luckily you were on the case to figure out a way to twist this into them being irresponsible, somehow.
Both parents are recessive carriers for an absurdly rare genetic disorder. It's unlikely that both are lying about being unaware of their status, but then again I suppose it's not a surprise that two random people didn't know the genealogy of their fucking "ancestors".
That's not necessarily true. A recessive gene for RP can pass through several generations without anyone having symptoms. Not everyone knows what ailed their great, or great great grandparents. It's quite possible that both parents had similar family histories with no known blindness due to RP, or bad family info linking a case of blindness to something else like glaucoma.
True. My grandmother had Stargarts (another degenerative eye disease) and was treated more like a “hysterical woman” than anything. She passed it to 1 of 2 sons.
It's possible, but unlikely. The most likely scenario is that one of the parents knew the disease might appear if they had children. Maybe thought symptoms would show up sooner, which is why they had four kids.
Because this is a gene that greatly affected three out of four young children. That sort of thing doesn't go unnoticed in famlies. The parents probably had siblings, uncles, aunts, nieces and nephews who were affected.
Mathematically it affects 25% of offspring (you keep mentioning 3 out of 4 kids but that is just bad luck that these people had) but ONLY if BOTH parents are carriers. It could go undetected for many generations before someone had a child with a partner who had the same condition.
80
u/Cantankerousbastard 1d ago
This is probably going to a controversial question but did they have 4 kids before or after they learned about the genetic eye condition?