Fate

Fate (Chromosome 4) Alice



Chromosome 4 the most famous of all the disease genes because a mutation in this gene or absencee of it causes many familiar dieases including Huntington's chorea. Very little is actually known about how this gene is used in everyday life, but we know clearly well how, why, and where it could go wrong. This gene consists of one single word repeated over and over again, C_G. Depending on how often it repats determines your fate of a normal life, or agony and premature death.If the word is repeated thirty-five or less times you will escape harm from this gene, but any more than that and you will in mid-life start the steady decent to death. The symptoms progress and intensify for 15 to 25 years before death, beginning with a slight deterioration of intellectual faculties, then jerking limbs desending to deep depression, halucinations, and delusions. Yet the worse symptom this disease inflicts on people is the dread and intence anxiety of waiting to see if they are sentenced to this death.

__Cirrhosis (54)-__ a disease of the liver caused by inadequate diet, excessive alcohol, characterized by the the death of liver cells and irreversible fibrosis. Yet to define genes by the diseases they cause is about as absurd as defining organs of the body by the diseases they get: livers are there to cause **cirrhosis**, hearts to cause heart attacks and brains to cause strokes.

What surprised me was that scientists and doctors by looking at this gene can tell people with the mutation at exactly what age they will show symptoms of the disease and when they will die. It's so exact to be terrifying. Even Cancer patients at least can hope they might get better and if not that they can at least hope to keep living for as long as possible.