what is the rarest and most fatal genetic disorder?
ivanderyugin
im doing a project for biology on genetic diseases, and i want to choose the rarest and deadliest disease, although i would be willing to pick a disease that is either the rarest or the deadliest.
It’s hard to have a lethal genetic disorder, since all the carriers would die first…Darwin’s Law
Thalassemia Major – it’s a seriously interesting disease with four basic types, major being the worst. Very rarely do people make it out of childhood with it, and the people who do have to have blood transfusions every month or so for their entire lives. It’s a disorder of the formation of red blood cells. It might be a really good one because it’s not a one trick pony like photo sensitvity (light allergy) or mostly undocumented (water allergy). There’s Thalassemia Major, Minor, Intermedius and Trait – and they’re all varying degrees of the same thing. Basically, depending on how messed up your red blood cell production is determines how bad your disease. It’s a lot like sickle cell anemia, which is another good tie in. The difference between the two is the actual shape of the malformed cell – the sickle cell is like a little dagger, whereas the Thalassemic cell is like a squshed down circle or an ellipse, unlike a healthy rbc called a target cell which is mostly totally round. U could also detail the ethnic differences in the two diseases, which is an interesting profile. All in all, there’s a lot of information, and u could do an overview or a shorter overview and some specific presentation on thal major. In general, it’s called a ‘hematological disorder,’ if that helps sell you on it.
In rereading the comments so far, the person who suggested vCJD is dead on as well – the human version of mad cow is highly interesting, and brings you into the arena of prion diseases and foodborne plague and such – and that one has a lot of NOW about it, since the beef industry is in many ways turning a blind eye to the problem.. Look it up as vCJD, bovine spongeform encephalopathy, and prion diseases. Good idea from the other person who mentioned it.
Most Fatal Disease ever? Smallpox
Genetic Disorder?
Rare genetic disorders are almost always named for the person(s) Try Fields Condition
or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (Human ‘Mad Cow disease~)