Tag archives: inheritance

So what is it? Dominant, Recessive, not genetic at all?

So what is it?  Dominant, Recessive, not genetic at all?

One of the key issues that people often have in grappling with genetics disease is the fact that genes and disorders that are supposedly genetic don't always make sense (or at least not the sense that people expect them to make.) What they see occur does not pass their intuition or logic of what they think they should see if the condition is really "genetic."

A problem will be identified that has never occurred before and people will say in all honesty---"that has never happened in my line" and yet they are told it is "genetic." This happens in human families as well. A genetic condition is diagnosed in a child and the first thing that both grandmothers say is "that did not come from our side of the family!" In some cases they may be wrong and in others they may be right. Different genes follow different "rules."

Recessive disorders in fact come from both families and are due simply to the fact that both the sire and dam happened to carry the same detrimental recessive gene. These can be passed on for many generations unrecognized and only revealed when two carriers happen to mate AND both ...