Biography of dr. jerome lejeune

I feel like I am abandoning them. Despite all the efforts of doctors and scientists, the cause of this congenital disease remained unknown for more than years… New techniques for culturing living tissues then made it possible to observe the chromosomes of the cells during their division. His discovery of the presence of a third chromosome 21 ended the search for the cause of this disease.

However, his greatest merit was demonstrating that, in these children, the hereditary information was intact, the only modification being quantitative in nature. Essentially a doctor by training, he continually combined observation and research. This enabled him to construct hypotheses potentially explaining how having one chromosome too many or too few could lead to mental disability.

And he proposed avenues of research aiming to decrease the effects of such defects. This condition would henceforth be called trisomy 21 Down syndrome. For the first time ever, a link was established between a state of mental disability and a chromosomal anomaly. Inthis extraordinary discovery was greeted with the award of the Kennedy Prize which Jerome Lejeune received personally from President John F.

While speaking at thousands of conferences around the world, he still maintained relationships with the children he treated and their families. Inhis work on chromosomal pathologies was rewarded with the William Allen Memorial Award. No wonder the editor asserts that the book "delivers a page-turner of unbelievable events of this man's life, his relentless pursuit of truth through both faith and science, and courage to speak on behalf of the preborn child to his colleagues who shunned him for such action.

He dedicated his life to giving their lives dignity and, ultimately, to find a cure, which he was never able to accomplish.

Biography of dr. jerome lejeune

The structure of these lines, which remain the same throughout the individual's life, is determined during the earliest stages of embryo development. As Lejeune and Turpin studied the hands of children with Down syndrome, they deduced that their dermatoglyphic anomalies appeared during embryo formation. Inbiologists from Lund University in Sweden announced that humans have exactly 46 chromosomes.

Turpin had many years earlier proposed the idea of culturing cells to count the number of chromosomes in trisomy. Gautier had recently joined the pediatrics group he headed at the Armand-Trousseau Hospital, and she offered to attempt this, since she had been trained in both cell culture and tissue staining techniques in the United States.

With very limited resources Gautier set up the first in vitro cell culture laboratory in France. Gautier entrusted her slides to Lejeune, a fellow researcher at CNRS, who offered to take pictures in another laboratory better equipped for this task. This was two years after Tjio and Levan had proven that the human species has 46 chromosomes.