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> Genetic Disorders Issue: 2007-2 Section: Biology

Turkish

 

There are a lot of disabled people in our society. Some of them were multilated by accident or by some illness, on the other hand some of them were multilated genetically. Sometimes, a situation goes wrong about our genetic structure.

 

A chromosome can be excessive or deficient. There can be 47 or 45 chromosome. This action makes a living disabled, either physically or mentally.

 

For 4,6 billion years (this time is accepted as the beginning of life) DNA has been working as a living’s cell’s metabolic activator.Though the word of genes hadn’t been used until 1900s,the researches about it was begun in 1800.

 

Gregor Mendel, an Australian monk, worked hard in church’s garden .He intercrossed greenpeas. He recorded greenpeas’shape ,flowers’colour. Having done this he put forth being of hereditary units or factors’theory.

 

That hadn’t been understood that those hereditary units or factors were genes until 1900s.

 

In the same term (1809-1882) Charles Darwin studied about medicine and religion.He collected a lot of fossils and found fossils of animals’ which had put forth today’s animals’ being. He went every island and found out that species brought about variations.

Illnesses - such as systic fibros or huntington- come from our genetic structure. Experts had been doing researches for a long time. They found out that some genetic changes cause these illnesses. They claim that genetic specilities bring alcoholism, tendency for guilty, etc. Namely, genetic affects ethic, too.

 

Our genetic structure has the ability of determine alcoholism agression, homosexuality. This action is called genetic determinism. According to one of the authors of Scientific American Magazine, John Hogan, some of these researches resemble some researhes which made by Francis Galton who is the father of Eugenics very much.

 

On the other hand, such situations as schizophrenia, manic depression, alcoholism and substance dependence are shown in genetic, so these illnesses can be diagnoticated easily and the society threats them more politely.

 

Especially in the USA, a lot of money is spent on researches of these illnesses. In Washington University G.E. Allen who is an expert on genetic researches and a science historian, says that the introduction of an examination or a front report human behaviours’ genetic basis progresses faster than the examination itself.

 

According to Hogan, media show images which are much more optimistic and out of reality. They include reports which have effective results, but they don’t include reports which have contradict results.

Males who have an excessive Y chromosome (genetic chromosome XYY not XY ) are more aggressive and tend to commit a crime than normal, to prove these can be shown as an example.

 

In 1960s, acording to a research in prisons, there were people who have an excessive Y chromosome more than normal prison population. Some researches took part in media.

 

Researchers who followed this, claimed that they are normal anyway except for being taller than another males. Getting lower points from mental tests.

 

In 1993 the USA National Science Academy published a report which explained that there is no relationship between having an excessive Y chromosome and agressive behaviour.

 

We said that genetic determinism makes us understand a specility and recover an illness.

 

Everyone who is opposite of the genetic determinism, directs critisizm at two different points. One of them is that the specilities such as alcoholism, tendency for guilty, etc can’t be explained these specilities with heredity, both their aim and method were critisized, such as Minnessota twin researches, clever genes researches, schizophrenia, manic depression and homosexuality genes researches. Second is that emphasizing the role of the environment at the appearance of a hereditary illness and recovering it.

 

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