Reply to Does anyone worry about "bad genes"?

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[quote=Anonymous]
I'm a geneticist.

The one thing I wish people were more aware of when they think of marriage and kids is heritable illness, both physical and mental. Social taboos and scientific ignorance have prevented couples from exploring this topic, but it really should be discussed pre-marriage, along with parenting philosophies and financial goals.

I hasten to add that it would be absurd to try to avoid all heritable diseases, since we are all carriers of several of them!

We need to lower the risk of passing on disease by mating with carriers of different diseases than those we carry ourselves. If one side of the family has people with Asperger's, then it would be great if the other side didn't. My husband's parent has Parkinsons', and I'm glad no one in my family has that. There is a strong history of breast cancer in my family, and I'm so relieved none of my ILs have that.

We didn't realize that we both have different types of ADHD, though, and one of our children has a severe and quite handicapping case of ADHD with co-morbid learning disorders. I'm sure it's because we each passed down separate alleles for ADHD+LDs to this child. Our other children are unaffected, or only mildly affected.

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