Posted on 10/20/2012 11:55:14 AM PDT by Tired of Taxes
Source: Boston Herald
Joey Fund Founder Sets the Record Straight on Disease
Hub business titan and philanthropist Joe O’Donnell told the Herald yesterday he’s deeply concerned that a California school dispute gaining national attention may spread misinformation about cystic fibrosis, the deadly disease that killed his son and prompted him in 1986 to found the Joey Fund, which has raised over $51 million to help find a cure.
Officials in Palo Alto, Calif., have asked an 11-year-old student who is reportedly a “carrier” with one defective cystic fibrosis gene — but not the pair of defective genes required to have the disease — to transfer to another school.
“What they should do is determine whether he has the disease or not,” O’Donnell said. “If he’s just a carrier, they’re crazy. He’s no threat to anyone.
The Palo Alto school officials have reportedly made their demand because there are students with CF already at the school where the boy started taking classes seven weeks ago.
O’Donnell, 68, who is himself a carrier, said the school officials seem misinformed about CF, which is a hereditary disease.
Nearly 10 million people in America have one copy of the defective gene, “carriers” with no symptoms.
By contrast, 30,000 people in America are CF patients, with two defective genes and all the symptoms of the disease,...
More at the Boston Herald link above.
Thanks for the clarification. CF is one scary disease. And heartbreaking as it strikes kids who don’t have great odds for a lengthy life expectancy.
The original article didn’t give us enough information, and the other articles weren’t very clear either, except for the one above. Yes, it is a scary disease. At least nowadays more can be done for people who have it.
It doesn't.
EDINVA has it bass-ackwards. The two children WHO ACTUALLY HAVE CF are a clear and present danger (according to the reasoning Melas and wideminded have presented on this thread) to every healthy kid in that middle school.
Coleman does not have AND NEVER WILL GET CF, he would need two copies of the defective gene to get CF. He only has one.
Coleman is no more a public health risk in general, nor a specific risk to the CF twins in particular, than any other child in California. There are NO, count them zero, pathogens more likely to infect a carrier of a single CF gene than any random child.
The CF twins, by contrast, "are human petri dishes growing larger colonies of bacteria and fungus than you’d find in a healthy individual".
They get to stay at Jordan Middle School.
Coleman gets moved to another school 3 miles away, where apparently the school board thinks he won't infect everything and everyone he touches.
Absolutely right.
Joe O'Donnell, by the way, is a gentleman and a scholar. And a rich entrepreneur and former neighbor of the next president.
But the twins have already adapted to their colonies, so there is nothing to be gained by separating them (if my understanding of the problem is correct). However, that would not be the case if they were, say, boyfriend / girlfriend. In that case, they would have had a chance to develop separate colonies of pathogens before meeting, which would potentially be very dangerous to each other when they come together to do what boys and girls do, neither having developed immunity to the other's pathogens. Current medical advice is that CF sufferers should stay away from each other.
However, the above does not apply to the kid in the story. Since he doesn't have the disease, he poses no more threat to the twins than the other kids in the school do.
It does not say in the article that the boy has only one defective copy of the CFTR gene.
It also does not say that he can never get CF, only that he does not have it now.
So it is unclear from the article whether he has one good copy of the CFTR gene, or if he is some sort of unusual case who has not come down with the disease despite having two defective copies.
Only Very Special People get AIDS, and those people must be treated with the utmost respect and consideration.
Diseases that are not a result of "lifestyle choices," however, deserve no such consideration.
“If there is a problem with this child attending one Middle School, how does transferring him to another one 3 miles away solve the problem? “
Because the other middle school does not already have kids with the disease? According to the article, while the disease is not contagious, it is very dangerous to have 2 unrelated kids with the disease come in contact with each other.
“If you read the details, it becomes clear that they’re not that stupid.”
They are ignorant...
The bacteria that is issue only possibly effects other CF persons...people without CF have no issue”
As the poster stated, READ THE DETAILS!
There ARE other CF persons in the school. THAT is why the child is being moved.
The original article I posted - as well as most of the articles out there about this story - does not seem to give quite enough information. But it sure got us talking about CF! I just learned more than I ever knew about cystic fibrosis. Thank you all.
Thanks for getting the discussion going. There’s so much we have yet to learn, so much the researchers have yet to learn. We can only pray that one day they will find a cure.
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