Hunting Down Bad Genes

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As people approach old age, often times, their bodies deteriorate. Along with the occasional knee replacement or mandatory walker they must push around, the mind also loses its youthful vigor. This languishment of the mind can commonly be linked to dementia or a prodigious amount of diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s Disease, or on a rare occasion, Huntington’s Disease. Huntington’s is a lesser-known problem that is associated with not only the declination of memory, but also the loss of muscle control. Huntington’s Disease has been altering the final years of unlucky individuals by changing the jovial years of retirement into an enduring horror; however, RNA interference research is uncovering a possible light at the end of the tunnel.
George Sumner Huntington, born into a family of physicians in New York in 1850, was the first to describe the disease (“George Sumner Huntington” par. 1). “Huntington’s chorea/disease” shows that George was familiar with the disease through “His father and his grandfather, also physicians, [who] had both treated sufferers from chorea for many years” (par. 3). During the Salem Witch Trials, according to the “Huntington’s chorea/disease,” the Bures family was commonly accused for witchcraft and put to death. This was due to the fact that many of the family members were struck ill with a strange disease, causing them to appear possessed and full of demons. The Bures family migrated to Connecticut from Suffolk, England, bringing this strange disease to the Americas (par. 3).
The symptoms of Huntington’s begin between the ages of 30 and 50 in 90 percent of afflicted people (“Huntington’s chorea/disease par. 1). Virginia Goolkasian summarizes the majority of the symptoms. To start, an afflicted...

... middle of paper ...

...ginia. "Delving into Huntington's Disease." USA Today (Farmingdale).
Sept. 2001: 34-35. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 20 Mar. 2014.
Gorner, Peter. "2 Americans Share Nobel Prize for Medicine." Chicago Tribune
(Chicago, IL). Oct. 2 2006: n.p. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.
"Huntington's chorea/disease." World of Health. Gale, 2007. Science in Context. Web. 21
Mar. 2014.
Hayden, Thomas. "DNA Meets Its Match." U.S. News & World Report. Feb. 24 2003:
n.p. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 23 Mar. 2014.
Revkin, Andrew. "Hunting Down Huntington's." Discover. Dec. 1993: 98+. SIRS Issues
Researcher. Web. 20 Mar. 2014.
"RNA Interference." Genetics. Ed. Richard Robinson. New York: Macmillan Reference
USA, 2008. Science in Context. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.
Rogers, Kara. "RNA interference (RNAi)." Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica,
Inc., 2014. Web. 26 Mar. 2014.

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