Up until this point, John Langdon Down had received all of the notoriety, after all he first identified the common characteristics (mostly physical ones) that go along with the syndrome. However, John Langdon Down had a few things wrong. He had mistakenly made the conclusion that the syndrome might be as a result of the parents having had Tuberculosis. As the years went on, and more facts were learned about the human genes it was Dr. Jerome Lejeune who, in 1959, discovered what we parents today call the “magical gene”. The one that is an extra, or extraordinary part of our loved ones with Down Syndrome. It has also given rise to more proper terminology for the genetic disorder as it is, in fact, a Trisomy disorder because there is a third copy of the 21st chromosome. This discovery allowed for more research (though still not enough) to determine that the disorder is not something that is caused by the parent’s doing or by the parents having caught a communicable disease.
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