July 12, 2022
When I started to develop this website, the first book that came to mind was Siddhartha Mukerjee’s The Gene: An Intimate Story. This book is not only well written by a Pulitzer Prize winning writer, it also makes science intriguing through Mukerjee’s personal genetic history of familial schizophrenia. He deftly uses stories of family members in India with schizophrenia to illustrate how a genetic disease impacts the entire extended family even those who do not have the disease themselves. Families with familial forms of gigantism experience the same thing.
When the gene mutation is low penetrance, meaning not every person that has the mutation develops the disease, it leaves family members wondering why some get the disease but not others. Scientists continue to study this phenomenon in hopes of understanding how and why genetic diseases move so randomly through families.
My favorite quote from his book is: “An organism is much more than its genes, of course, but to understand an organism, you much first understand its genes.” I hope that by understanding my genetic legacy and the world of gigantism, I can better understand myself as I reach out to find others with the disease that we share.