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Crazy-All The Time

If you read a Barack Obama speech, you notice that, aside from the we-are-the-ones-we’ve-been-waiting -for narcissistic uplift and the Washington-needs-to-lift-people-up-not tear-them down bromides, almost everything he says is, well, nuts.

I don’t mean the moments when he gets carried away and announces that his administration would “stop the import of all toys from China.” As it happens, that’s a policy I’m not unsympathetic to. Almost 80 percent of American toys are made in the People’s Republic and, while that may well be appropriate given the whiff of totalitarian coerciveness that hangs around Barney the Dinosaur, I can’t say I’m entirely comfortable with contracting out U. S. innocence to the butchers of Tiananmen. For one thing, come the Sino-American War, Beijing will have the ultimate fifth column inside the West: The nation’s moppets, resentful at having their Elmos and SpongeBobs cut off for the duration, will be shinning down the drainpipe after dark in ski masks and blowing up power stations to hasten the day of liberation.

But forget that. Worse than the painting-by-numbers demagoguery are some of the accidental glimpses of the senator’s worldview. For example: “The drug companies, they’re not going to give up their profits easily when it comes to health care.”

Well, gee, how unreasonable of them. But demanding they give up their profits “easily” comes easy to him. Until he wrote his recent bestsellser, the concept of “profits” was entirely theoretical to Obama’s life. As his wife put it, the Obamas “left corporate America, which is a lot of what we’re asking young people to do. Don’t go into corporate America.” So Barack didn’t. Instead, he became a “community organizer,” whatever that is. It would make no difference to life in the great republic if every “community organizer” in the lower 48 were deposited on an atoll in the Antarctic. On the other hand, if America’s drug companies were no longer profitable, it might make rather a lot of difference.

In print, Barack Obama comes as close as any major-party nominee ever has to sounding like the kookiest college Marxist. But, as I say, that’s when you read his words. When you hear him, in that smooth baritone that would make “Would you like fries with that?” sound like change you can believe in, everything is terribly reasonable, moderate, evenly modulated.

I was thinking of the Obama technique while watching his campaign’s in-house pastor on TV. The senator had found himself obliged to plead that, alas, he’d chanced to be out of town for God Damn America Sunday, AIDS Conspiracy Sunday, and the American Had It Coming 9/11 Memorial Service, and defenders of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright had offered the reflexive response that his controversial remarks had been taken out of “context.” So the reverend supplied the context. He went to the NAACP and the National Press Club, and CNN & Co. broadcast the speeches live under the bizarre misapprehension that this was doing their man Barack a favor. Wright did impressions of the Kennedys and demonstrated the differing styles of black and white marching bands, attributing these to genetic differences: Blacks are “right-brainers,” while whites are “left-brainers.” Blacks have a vibrant oral tradition deriving from long-ago African tribesmen who were in effect the first hip-hoppers, while Mozart wrote down his symphonies on manuscript paper, which is all very well but, let’s face it, the powdered-wig set have no sense of rhythm.

I paraphrase, but not much. Underpinning every utterance of Reverend Wright was the assumption that these features are hardwired into us and no amount of culture or education can undo them. Presumably no amount of government money or employment quotas can undo them either, although the reverend didn’t go that far. Had a white man gone on national TV and given the speeches Wright gave, he’d be finished in public life, and so would any man who’d been dumb enough to spend 20 years in his company, get married by him, and entrust his kids’ religious upbringing to the guy.

As it happens, honky culture is also rich in oral tradition - Homer, for example, not to mention medieval nursery rhymes still known to every kid in the early 21st century. Of course, the white man then figured the big bucks were in writing things down and hiring a lawyer to enforce your copyright. But the idea that black artists are conditioned by their “oral tradition” to half-baked hoodlum exhibitionism barked over a pneumatic backing track would have struck, say, Scott Joplin as absurd. Duke Ellington has more in common with Ravel than with Snoop Dog.

But the best refutation of Wright’s thesis is his protege. Were Obama carrying on in his pastor’s vernacular tradition, he’d be at single digits. I think the senator’s shaping up to be a tragic figure - a man born free of the bitterness of the black experience who by choice immersed himself in the toxic pool of Jeremiah Wright’s neo-segregationism. When Obama’s mask slips and he makes his throwaway observations about health-care profits, you glimpse the narrowness of the world in which he’s spent his adult life. But political candidacies are about the music more than the lyrics. And when he opens his mouth to sing, Obama’s baritone is reassuring and mellifluous, and the accompaniment beautifully orchestrated. Tonally, he’s the Nat King Cole of political candidates - which suggests he at least knows the limitations of Jeremiah Wright’s wacky race theories on vernacular authenticity.

ONE DOWN, TWO TO GO

Well, it looks like it’s the end of the road for Hillary. Time for her to pack up her pantsuits and go back to … wherever it is she’s pretending to be living these days. Now we just have to get rid of the other two. Perhaps if (fill in the blank) endorses Obama…

This week, Bill Clinton lost his second presidential election for a protege.

Ronald Reagan was so popular, he not only won a 49-state landslide re-election for himself, but he also won a symbolic third term for his boob of a vice president, George Herbert Walker Bush (who immediately blew it by breaking his own “no new taxes” pledge).

By contrast, in addition to not being able to get half the country to vote for him in two tries, Clinton’s connection to any other presidential candidate spells utter doom. Both his vice president and his wife have been defeated in elections they should have won, but lost because of their unfortunate association with him. The country has spoken. It wants to be rid of the Clintons.

The reason two elections in recent history — the 2000 presidential election and the 2008 Democratic primary — were razor-close is that in both cases there was some strange, foreboding, otherworldly force dragging down the presumptive winner.

Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore, lost an election that should have been his in a walk. In fact, he was the first incumbent president or vice president in 100 years to lose an election in peacetime with a good economy. Mind you, that was before we even knew that Gore was a deranged conspiracy theorist who believes the Earth is in serious peril from cow flatulence.

What was the mystery factor to explain such a historic loss?

The media’s pollsters may have lied to the public about Clinton’s vaunted popularity, but Gore’s pollsters got paid not to lie to him. And they told Gore the truth: Clinton was killing him.

After the election, Gore pollster — and erstwhile Clinton pollster — Stanley Greenberg told Vanity Fair magazine that if Clinton had helped, he said he would have “had Bill Clinton carry Al Gore around on his back.” (This was when one man could still actually carry Al Gore on his back.) But research showed that whenever Clinton was mentioned, Gore’s numbers went down faster than — oh, never mind.

Steve Rosenthal, political director of the AFL-CIO, also blamed Clinton for Gore’s loss, saying polls showed that voters who cared about character voted for Bush. (I know, I know. Are there actually people who care about character and vote Democrat? Yes, apparently they exist.)

Poor Gore did everything he could to distance himself from Clinton, publicly criticizing Clinton’s sexual exploits with an intern, refusing to allow Clinton to campaign with him and taking as his vice president Joe Lieberman — the first Democratic senator to scathingly denounce Clinton’s antics with Lewinsky from the Senate floor.

But voters couldn’t forget Gore’s boss, the purple-faced lecher.

As election predictors go, the Dow Jones has been remarkably accurate. If the Dow goes up from the end of July to the end of October, the incumbent president or vice president wins; if it goes down, the incumbent loses. It has been wrong only four times since the Dow was created in 1896.

Thus, on Nov. 1, 2000, an article in The New York Times began: “The verdict of the Dow Jones industrial average is in, and it says Al Gore is headed for the White House.”

And yet Gore lost. It was only the third time in more than a century that the Dow went up in the three months before the election and the incumbent lost. The two other times were: (1) Herbert Hoover in the middle of the Great Depression, and (2) Hubert Humphrey in the middle of the Vietnam War. (The only time the Dow went down and the incumbent won anyway was for popular Dwight Eisenhower.)

So we have documented proof: Americans rank Bill Clinton with national misfortunes on the order of the Great Depression and the Vietnam War. (This, of course, is an overreaction: The Great Depression wasn’t that bad.)

And now Bill Clinton has wrecked Hillary’s campaign, too. He’s like the creepy guy who graduated last year but still hangs around the high school cafeteria chatting up sophomores.

In a Time magazine poll taken earlier this year, more than twice as many voters said Bill Clinton’s involvement in Hillary’s campaign made them less likely to vote for her as said they were more likely to vote for her. (Some even said that “having Bill Clinton around makes me less likely to vote for What’s-Her-Name.” One-third of the respondents were upset Bill didn’t call the next day, like he promised.)

So before remembering that we are now left with two dangerous choices for president — a young liberal who is friendly with terrorists or an old liberal who is friendly with Teddy Kennedy — take a moment to revel in the fact that our long national nightmare is over. It turns out getting rid of the Clintons was the change we’ve been waiting for.

Voter ID Battle Shifts to Proof of Citizenship

The battle over voting rights will expand this week as lawmakers in Missouri are expected to support a proposed constitutional amendment to enable election officials to require proof of citizenship from anyone registering to vote.

The measure would allow far more rigorous demands than the voter ID requirement recently upheld by the Supreme Court, in which voters had to prove their identity with a government-issued card.

Sponsors of the amendment — which requires the approval of voters to go into effect, possibly in an August referendum — say it is part of an effort to prevent illegal immigrants from affecting the political process. Critics say the measure could lead to the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of legal residents who would find it difficult to prove their citizenship.

Voting experts say the Missouri amendment represents the next logical step for those who have supported stronger voter ID requirements and the next battleground in how elections are conducted. Similar measures requiring proof of citizenship are being considered in at least 19 state legislatures. Bills in Florida, Kansas, Oklahoma and South Carolina have strong support. But only in Missouri does the requirement have a chance of taking effect before the presidential election.

In Arizona, the only state that requires proof of citizenship to register to vote, more than 38,000 voter registration applications have been thrown out since the state adopted its measure in 2004. That number was included in election data obtained through a lawsuit filed by voting rights advocates and provided to The New York Times. More than 70 percent of those registrations came from people who stated under oath that they were born in the United States, the data showed.

Already, 25 states, including Missouri, require some form of identification at the polls. Seven of those states require or can request photo ID. More states may soon decide to require photo ID now that the Supreme Court has upheld the practice. Democrats have already criticized these requirements as implicitly intended to keep lower-income voters from the polls, and are likely to fight even more fiercely now that the requirements are expanding to include immigration status.

“Three forces are converging on the issue: security, immigration and election verification,” said Dr. Robert A. Pastor, co-director of the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University in Washington. This convergence, he said, partly explains why such measures are likely to become more popular and why they will make election administration, which is already a highly partisan issue, even more heated and litigious.

“Whether the U.S. government combines these different initiatives into a coherent plan with safeguards for privacy instead of dozens of separate ID cards that could be the source of discrimination and confusion is the question,” he said.

The Missouri secretary of state, Robin Carnahan, a Democrat who opposes the measure, estimated that it could disenfranchise up to 240,000 registered voters who would be unable to prove their citizenship.

In most of the states that require identification, voters can use utility bills, paychecks, driver’s licenses or student or military ID cards to prove their identity. In the Democratic primary election last week in Indiana, several nuns were denied ballots because they lacked the required photo IDs.

Measures requiring proof of citizenship raise the bar higher because they offer fewer options for documentation. In most cases, aspiring voters would have to produce an original birth certificate, naturalization papers or a passport. Arizona and Missouri, along with some other states, now show whether a driver is a citizen on the face of a driver’s license, and within a few years all states will be required by the federal government to restrict licenses to legal residents.

Critics say that when this level of documentation is applied to voting, it becomes more difficult for the poor, disabled, elderly and minorities to participate in the political process.

“Everyone has been focusing on voter ID laws generally, but the most pernicious measures and the ones that really promise to prevent the most eligible voters from voting is what we see in Arizona and now in Missouri,” said Jon Greenbaum, a former voting rights official at the Department of Justice and now the director of the voting rights project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a liberal advocacy group.

Aside from its immediacy, the action by Missouri is important because it has been a crucial swing state in recent presidential elections, with outcomes often decided by a razor-thin margin.

Supporters of the measures cite growing concerns that illegal immigrants will try to vote. They say proof of citizenship measures are an important way to improve the accuracy of registration rolls and the overall voter confidence in the process.

State Representative Stanley Cox, a Republican from Sedalia and the sponsor of the amendment, said that the Missouri Constitution already required voters to be citizens and that his amendment was simply meant to better enforce that requirement.

“The requirements we have right now are totally inadequate,” Mr. Cox said. “You can present a utility bill, and that doesn’t prove anything. I could sit here with my nice photocopier and create a thousand utility bills with different names on them.”

From October 2002 to September 2005, the Justice Department indicted 40 voters for registration fraud or illegal voting, 21 of whom were noncitizens, according to department records.

In 2006, the Missouri legislature passed a photo identification bill that the State Supreme Court later ruled unconstitutional because it placed too much of a burden on voters. It was that ruling that has spurred state lawmakers to try to change the constitution.

The proposed amendment does not require the signature of the governor but would need to be approved by the voters in the state’s August primary in the governor’s race to take effect before the presidential election.

If passed this week, the amendment clears the way for a pending bill that would require some kind of identification in order to prove citizenship and to register to vote. But many questions about the bill — like whether current registered voters will have to obtain a new form of identification — have not been resolved.

Lillie Lewis, a voter who lives in St. Louis and spoke at a news conference last week organized to oppose the amendment, said she already had a difficult time trying to get a photo ID from the state, which asked her for a birth certificate. Ms. Lewis, who was born in Mississippi and said she was 78 years old, said officials of that state sent her a letter stating that they had no record of her birth.

“That’s downright wrong,” Ms. Lewis said. “I have voted in almost all of the presidential races going back I can’t remember how long, but if they tell me I need a passport or birth certificate that’ll be the end of that.”

A 2006 federal rule intended to keep illegal immigrants from receiving Medicaid was widely criticized by state officials for shutting out tens of thousands of United States citizens who were unable to find birth certificates or other documents proving their citizenship.

Supporters of citizenship requirements, however, say the threat of voting by illegal immigrants is real. Thor Hearne, a lawyer for the American Center for Voting Rights, a conservative advocacy group, cited a California congressional race in 1996 in which a Republican, Bob Dornan, was narrowly defeated. Mr. Dornan contested the results, claiming that illegal immigrants had voted.

After a 14-month investigation by state, county and federal officials, a panel concluded that up to 624 noncitizens may have registered to vote. The report came to no firm determination of whether any of those people had actually voted.

Mr. Hearne said the requirement would not pose a significant hardship on voters.

“There were a lot of the same alarmist charges regarding Indiana voter ID law and how it would disenfranchise so many people,” Mr. Hearne said, “and those allegations were not accepted by the Supreme Court.” He added that if states actively provided a free form of identification proving citizenship, the number of people who would be disenfranchised would be very low.

OBAMA CAMPAIGN GIVES UP ON FINDING ‘MR. WRIGHT’

Whew! I’m certainly glad to hear the “snippets” from Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons “in context.”

In the famous B. Hussein Obama speech that sent a tingle down Chris Matthews’ leg, Obama dismissed the clips of Rev. Wright being played on TV as mere “snippets.” He claimed the media were highlighting Wright’s “most offensive words,” complaining that they had been played endlessly, as if repetition were the problem with the statement: “GOD DAMN AMERICA!”

It’s absolutely unheard of to repeat passages from famous speeches. In fact, I have a dream that we will not do that. Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask that the media stop replaying “snippets.” All we have to fear is repetition itself, because we are the people we’ve been waiting for to tear down that wall of endless repetition.

So, like I said: Whew. At last Rev. Wright’s “snippets” have been put in a healing context. In two speeches and one uxorious interview with PBS’ Bill Moyers over the past few days, Rev. Wright had plenty of time to lay out the lush analytical context of his remarks.

In his speech to the National Press Club on Monday, for example, Wright described America as a country of “segregation, Jim Crow, lynching and the separate-but-equal fantasy.” Then he ran outside to feed more quarters into the meter where his time machine was parked.

Wright described this as a country that supported the “racist regime of South Africa” and “the Contras, who were killing the peasants and the Miskito Indians in those two countries” — as opposed to the Sandinistas, who were equal-opportunity murderers with a more diverse group of victims.

He said this is a country that “cuts food stamps and spends billions fighting in an unjust war in Iraq,” neglecting to add that before you can cut the food stamp program, you must have a country that has a food stamp program.

He said we are a country that sent “over 4,000 American boys and girls of every race to die over a lie.” And Wright said it is a country “where I can worship God on Sunday morning wearing a black clergy robe and kill others on Sunday evening wearing a white Klan robe.” (Unless, like me, you do all your Klan-related murdering on “casual Fridays.”)

And, to listen to Wright, those were the “U.S. of KKK A.’s” good points! (Is it just me, or does Rev. Wright sound kind of bitter these days? I sure hope he doesn’t have a gun.)

He clarified his Sept. 16, 2001, sermon, in which he said that on 9/11 “America’s chickens are coming home to roost” by saying: “You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you.” I’m glad to get the full context on that because I had thought he was talking about chicken farming.

Actually, that’s pretty much the way I took it even when presented as a “snippet.”

Rev. Wright also put into context his church giving an award to fellow Obama supporter Louis Farrakhan by saying: “He is one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century. That’s what I think about him. … I am not going to put down Louis Farrakhan.”

Why did Rev. Wright’s supporters think it would be helpful to hear longer versions of the “snippets”?

Curiously, Rev. Wright complained that “everybody wants to paint me as if I’m anti-Semitic because of what Louis Farrakhan said 20 years ago” — especially those damn East Coast, money-grubbing Jews, he carelessly added. This from a man whose entire oeuvre is based on reveling in what happened in this country 250 years ago.

Rev. Wright clarified his statement, “GOD DAMN AMERICA!” by explaining: “God doesn’t bless everything. God condemns something — and d-e-m-n, ‘demn,’ is where we get the word ‘damn.’ God damns some practices.”

Well, that changes the meaning entirely.

One begins to suspect that the Clintons, flush with those megamillions they got from selling their previous tenancy at the White House, have put the reverend on staff. I believe this used to be called “walking around money.”

Obama said the Rev. Wright he heard defending himself on Monday was not the Rev. Wright he met 20 years ago. This is the political equivalent of the “It’s not you, it’s me” speech. He might just as well have said, “I love Rev. Wright. I’m just not in love with him anymore. Hey, can I have my CDs back?”

If it takes Obama 20 years to notice that his pastor is a traitorous, racist nut-job, it will probably take him his full term of office to realize that the U.S. has been invaded and subdued by al-Qaida. Let’s just hope President Obama pays closer attention during national security briefings than he did during 20 years of the Rev. Wright’s church services.

The only good news for the Obama campaign this week is that Obama admitted that his relationship with Rev. Wright is “a legitimate political issue,” which at least makes him smarter than John McCain, who just last week denounced the North Carolina Republicans for an ad mentioning Obama’s raving lunatic pastor.

Turner Syndrome | A Not Well Known Disease

Turner Syndrome

Turner syndrome is a genetic disorder that affects a girl’s development. The cause is a missing or incomplete X chromosome. Girls who have it are short, and their ovaries don’t work properly. Most are infertile. They are at risk for health difficulties such as high blood pressure, kidney problems, diabetes, cataracts, osteoporosis and thyroid problems.

Other physical features typical of Turner syndrome are

• Short, “webbed” neck with folds of skin from tops of shoulders to sides of neck
• Low hairline in the back
• Low-set ears
• Swollen hands and feet

There is no cure for Turner syndrome, but there are some treatments for the symptoms. Growth hormone often helps girls reach heights that are close to average. Hormone replacement can stimulate sexual development. Assisted reproduction techniques can help some women with Turner syndrome get pregnant.

What is Turner syndrome?

Turner syndrome is a chromosomal condition that alters development in females. Women with this condition tend to be shorter than average and are usually unable to conceive a child (infertile) because of an absence of ovarian function. Other features of this condition that can vary among women who have Turner syndrome include: extra skin on the neck (webbed neck), puffiness or swelling (lymphedema) of the hands and feet, skeletal abnormalities, heart defects and kidney problems.

This condition occurs in about 1 in 2,500 female births worldwide, but is much more common among pregnancies that do not survive to term (miscarriages and stillbirths).

Turner syndrome is a chromosomal condition related to the X chromosome.

Researchers have not yet determined which genes on the X chromosome are responsible for most signs and symptoms of Turner syndrome. They have, however, identified one gene called SHOX that is important for bone development and growth. Missing one copy of this gene likely causes short stature and skeletal abnormalities in women with Turner syndrome.

What are the symptoms of Turner syndrome?

Girls who have Turner syndrome are shorter than average. They often have normal height for the first three years of life, but then have a slow growth rate. At puberty they do not have the usual growth spurt.

Non-functioning ovaries are another symptom of Turner syndrome. Normally a girl’s ovaries begin to produce sex hormones (estrogen and progesterone) at puberty. This does not happen in most girls who have Turner syndrome. They do not start their periods or develop breasts without hormone treatment at the age of puberty.

Even though many women who have Turner have non-functioning ovaries and are infertile, their vagina and womb are totally normal.

In early childhood, girls who have Turner syndrome may have frequent middle ear infections. Recurrent infections can lead to hearing loss in some cases.

Girls with Turner Syndrome are usually of normal intelligence with good verbal skills and reading skills. Some girls, however, have problems with math, memory skills and fine-finger movements.

Additional symptoms of Turner syndrome include the following:

• An especially wide neck (webbed neck) and a low or indistinct hairline.
• A broad chest and widely spaced nipples.
• Arms that turn out slightly at the elbow.
• A heart murmur, sometimes associated with narrowing of the aorta (blood vessel exiting the heart).
• A tendency to develop high blood pressure (so this should be checked regularly).
• Minor eye problems that are corrected by glasses.
• Scoliosis (deformity of the spine) occurs in 10 percent of adolescent girls who have Turner syndrome.
• The thyroid gland becomes under-active in about 10 percent of women who have Turner syndrome. Regular blood tests are necessary to detect it early and if necessary treat with thyroid replacement
• Older or over-weight women with Turner syndrome are slightly more at risk of developing diabetes.
• Osteoporosis can develop because of a lack of estrogen, but this can largely be prevented by taking hormone replacement therapy.

How is Turner syndrome diagnosed?

A diagnosis of Turner syndrome may be suspected when there are a number of typical physical features observed such as webbed neck, a broad chest and widely spaced nipples. Sometimes diagnosis is made at birth because of heart problems, an unusually wide neck or swelling of the hands and feet.

The two main clinical features of Turner syndrome are short stature and the lack of the development of the ovaries.

Many girls are diagnosed in early childhood when a slow growth rate and other features are identified. Diagnosis sometimes takes place later when puberty does not occur.

Turner syndrome may be suspected in pregnancy during an ultrasound test. This can be confirmed by prenatal testing - chorionic villous sampling or amniocentesis - to obtain cells from the unborn baby for chromosomal analysis. If a diagnosis is confirmed prenatally, the baby may be under the care of a specialist pediatrician immediately after birth.

Diagnosis is confirmed by a blood test, called a karyotype. This is used to analyze the chromosomal composition of the female. More information about this will be discussed in the section “Is Turner syndrome inherited?”

What is the treatment for Turner syndrome?

During childhood and adolescence, girls may be under the care of a pediatric endocrinologist, who is a specialist in childhood conditions of the hormones and metabolism.

Growth hormone injections are beneficial in some individuals with Turner syndrome. Injections often begin in early childhood and may increase final adult height by a few inches.

Estrogen replacement therapy is usually started at the time of normal puberty, around 12 years to start breast development. Estrogen and progesterone are given a little later to begin a monthly ‘period,’ which is necessary to keep the womb healthy. Estrogen is also given to prevent osteoporosis.

Babies born with a heart murmur or narrowing of the aorta may need surgery to correct the problem. A heart expert (cardiologist) will assess and follow up any treatment necessary.

Girls who have Turner syndrome are more likely to get middle ear infections. Repeated infections may lead to hearing loss and should be evaluated by the pediatrician. An ear, nose and throat specialist (ENT) may be involved in caring for this health issue.

High blood pressure is quite common in women who have Turner syndrome. In some cases, the elevated blood pressure is due to narrowing of the aorta or a kidney abnormality. However, most of the time, no specific cause for the elevation is identified. Blood pressure should be checked routinely and, if necessary, treated with medication. Women who have Turner syndrome have a slightly higher risk of having an under active thyroid or developing diabetes. This should also be monitored during routine health maintenance visits and treated if necessary.

Regular health checks are very important. Special clinics for the care of girls and women who have Turner syndrome are available in some areas, with access to a variety of specialists. Early preventive care and treatment is very important.

Almost all women are infertile, but pregnancy with donor embryos may be possible.

Having appropriate medical treatment and support allows a woman with Turner syndrome to lead a normal, healthy and happy life.

Is Turner syndrome inherited?

Turner syndrome is not usually inherited in families. Turner syndrome occurs when one of the two X chromosomes normally found in women is missing or incomplete. Although the exact cause of Turner syndrome is not known, it appears to occur as a result of a random error during the formation of either the eggs or sperm.

Humans have 46 chromosomes, which contain all of a person’s genes and DNA. Two of these chromosomes, the sex chromosomes, determine a person’s gender. Both of the sex chromosomes in females are called X chromosomes. (This is written as XX.) Males have an X and a Y chromosome (written as XY). The two sex chromosomes help a person develop fertility and the sexual characteristics of their gender.

In Turner syndrome, the girl does not have the usual pair of two complete X chromosomes. The most common scenario is that the girl has only one X chromosome in her cells. Some girls with Turner syndrome do have two X chromosomes, but one of the X chromosomes is incomplete. In another scenario, the girl has some cells in her body with two X chromosomes, but other cells have only one. This is called mosaicism.

NHGRI Clinical Research on Turner Syndrome

NHGRI is not currently conducting clinical research on Turner syndrome.

• ClinicalTrials.gov provides information on clinical research studies. Currently, there are several clinical trials at other institutes and organizations who are enrolling individuals with Turner syndrome. They include:
  • Defining the Optimal Hormonal Replacement Therapy in Turner Syndrome [clinicaltrials.gov]
  • Turner Syndrome: Genotype and Phenotype [clinicaltrials.gov]
  • Long-Term Growth and Skeletal Effects of Early Growth Hormone Treatment in Turner Syndrome [clinicaltrials.gov]
  • A Study to Evaluate Subjects With Turner Syndrome Treated With Growth Hormone [clinicaltrials.gov]
  • Study to Identify Markers of Insulin Resistance During Growth Hormone Treatment for Short Stature [clinicaltrials.gov]
  • Bone Mineral Density (BMD) in Adolescents With Growth Hormone Deficiency (GHD) [clinicaltrials.gov]
  • Study to Define Optimal IGF-1 Monitoring in Children Treated With NutropinAq [clinicaltrials.gov]
• Current NHGRI Clinical Studies
• Search ClinicalTrials.gov [clinicaltrials.gov]
• Clinical Research FAQ

Additional Resources for Turner Syndrome

• Turner Syndrome [nichd.nih.gov]
  From Genetics Home Reference
• Turner’s Syndrome [aaa.dk]
  From the Turner Syndrome Center
• Turner Syndrome [ghr.nlm.nih.gov]
  From Genetics Home Reference
• Turner Syndrome [turners.nichd.nih.gov]
  From the National Institute of Child Health and Development.
• Turner’s Syndrome [nlm.nih.gov]
  From Medline Plus
• Turner Syndrome [nlm.nih.gov]
  More from Medline Plus
• Turner Syndrome Society of the United States [turner-syndrome-us.org]
  Encourages medical research, the dissemination of state-of-the-art TS information, and social support services to individuals, families, physicians and the general public.
• The Magic Foundation: Turner Syndrome [magicfoundation.org]
  A national non-profit organization created to provide support services for the families of children afflicted with a wide variety of disorders, syndromes or diseases that affect a child’s growth.
• Turner Syndrome [rarediseases.org]
  From the National Organization for Rare Disorders
• Health Supervision for Children With Turner Syndrome [pediatrics.aappublications.org]
  An article from Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics
• Turner Syndrome [emedicine.com]
  From eMedicine
• Finding Reliable Health Information Online
  A listing of information and links for finding comprehensive genetics health information online.

For more information follow this link - Medscape. If you’re unable to access this page – please advise and I will post information and links for those that are interested.

MorganLighter

Restrain judicial activism

John McCain’s graceful and serious speech this week at Wake Forest University puts one of the most important issues of 2008 squarely in focus. Will social policy in the USA continue to be made by panels of unelected judges with lifetime tenure, or will we have a judiciary governed by self-restraint and fidelity to the rule of law?

With clarity as well as a personal history of fairness in judicial matters, McCain laid out the case for a judicial branch that rises above political strife but does not undermine representative government. To some critics of his view that judges should interpret and not make the law, the debate is merely about different forms of judicial activism — liberal vs. conservative.

American history powerfully refutes that view. The Federalist Papers set forth the argument that the judicial branch of the national government would be the “least dangerous” to liberty. This would happen not because that branch would be filled with the wisest and most learned citizens, but because of its limited powers. In Alexander Hamilton’s famous words, the federal courts would have “neither force nor will, but merely judgment.”

Those words are carefully and perfectly chosen. Force — the police power — is a feature of the executive branch; will is the voice of the people through their elected officials.

Through the centuries, overreaching judges have attempted to seize power on questions that span the social and political spectrum. Activist U.S. Supreme Courts gave a green light to slavery in 1857 and to child labor in 1905, overturning duly enacted laws.

In our time, the Supreme Court has given the nation abortion on demand, thereby creating a national issue and actually delaying — because it doubted — the ability of the American people to reason together to solutions. Today, various courts claim the power to levy taxes, strike down the national motto, remake the institution of marriage, seize private property for non-public purposes, and run state agencies.

John McCain has pledged to nominate qualified judges who will leave the legislating to the people. This isn’t a campaign plank; it is one of our nation’s core ideas.

Amy Richards

HERE’S A LITTLE QUIZ.

Assume you’re a feminist who is pregnant with triplets. What does hell look like?

Give up?

Answer: Costco. On Staten Island. The mayonnaise aisle, to be precise.

This is pretty much how Amy Richards sees it, if her guest column in the Sunday New York Times Magazine is any indication. And it’s also pretty much the least of her problems.

Rarely have I read anything so chilling as Ms. Richards essay titled “When One Is Enough” – on the subject of what is euphemistically called “selective reduction.”

Who is Amy Richards? Well, to judge from the piece, she’s simply an average citizen, sharing her firsthand experiences with abortion. Only later, prompted by revelations on the Internet, does the New York Times bother informing its readers that Amy Richards is, in fact, a longtime abortion-rights activist, a little piece of information that might have, as the Times put it, “she light on her mind-set.”

In her essay, Ms. Richards tells us that she is thirty-four years old, lives in Manhattan, went off the Pill because it made her “moody,” an became pregnant. Her boyfriend, Peter, whom she’s been with for three years, is the father. At the doctor’s office, she the gets the unexpected news that she’s carrying three fetuses.

“My immediate response was, I cannot have triplets,” Ms. Richards tells us. “I was not married; I lived in a five-story walk-up in the East Village; I worked freelance; and I would have to go on bed rest in March. I lecture at colleges, and my biggest months are March and April. I would have to give up my main income for the rest of the year. There was a part of me that was sure I could work around that. But it was a matter of, DO I WANT TO?”

What do you think?

“I looked at Peter and asked the doctor: ‘Is it possible to get rid of one of them? Or two of them?’ The obstetrician wasn’t an expert in selective reduction, but she knew that with a shot of potassium chloride you could eliminate one or more.”

Which is just what Ms. Richards decides to do – “get rid of” one or two of them. After all, she writes, if she kept all three … this is where the mayo at Costco on Staten Island come in.

“I’d have to give up my life … I’m going to have to move to Staten Island. I’ll never leave my house because I’ll have to take care for these children. I’ll have to start shopping only at Costco and buying big jars of mayonnaise.”

She would have to move to Staten Island and shop at Costco and buy big jars of mayonnaise! Oh, the humanity!

The point is not that Amy Richards is in favor of abortion, an issue as complicated and contentious as any in our public life. The point is that this woman is the poster child for all those who so easily reduce the procedure simply to a matter of personal convenience. Amy Richards is not even embarrassed to let the world know she would rather croak than leave her five-story walk-up in Manhattan … for a place like Staten Island; that she’d rather green-light a couple of shots of chloride to the hearts of the twins …than give up her biggest income months on the college-lecture circuit. This is a woman, despite her matter of fact tone, who is dripping with contempt – not for the twins, of course, for who she apparently feels nothing at all – but for basic decency, not to mention for all those pathetic, ordinary Americans who don’t think it’s so terrible to live in the suburbs and who actually like shopping at Costco and who have lives that include Little League and Girl Scouts; the ones who would feel something (other than relief) if they had to get rid of a set of twins they were carrying.

“When we saw the specialist,” Richards goes on, “we found out that I was carrying identical twins and a stand alone. My doctors thought the stand alone was three days older. There was something psychologically comforting about that, since I wanted to have just one.”

Psychologically comforting? Well, yes. Because, armed with this new information, the choice was easy: The twins go, the stand alone stays, “a shot of potassium chloride to the heart of the fetus” takes care of the whole thing, she writes without a hint of emotion. So, how does the Amy Richards saga ends? She tells us that she had a boy “and everything is fine.”

Really? I think the jury is still out on that one. Who knows what her son will think when he grows up and finds out about the siblings that his mom “got rid of,” the ones who were so efficiently “eliminated”? Who know what he will think if he ever reads her frightening essay in the New York Times. If he has a shred of humanity his mother so proudly lacks, he’ll be sick.

Tony Rezko’s Trial Spells Trouble for Barack

Barack Obama has two categories of problematic friends.

On one hand, there are the radicals - such people as his pastor Jeremiah Wright, and his friend Bill Ayers, a former leader in the home-grown ’60’s terror group the Weather Underground. On the other hand, there are the players - such Illinois political operators as indicted fund raiser and businessman Antonin ‘Tony’ Rezko, a man who has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Obama’s campaigns and helped him buy a $1.65 million house in Chicago.

The radicals have received more coverage in the national media so far, simply because the public nature of what they do makes them easier to cover. All a broadcast network needs to do is play clips from Wright’s ‘God damn American’ sermon, bring on a couple of political analysts to talk about it, and voila : insta-story. For newspapers, it’s as simple as reprinting excerpts from Ayer’s memoir, in which he wrote, “Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon.”

But Rezko’s corruption trial, which has been unfolding in a federal courtroom in Chicago, over the past several weeks, has the potential to change the balance. For one thing, the trial has already yielded new information on the corrupt activities of several other Illinois players whom Obama has ties, including his former boss, Allison Davis. For another, Rezko stands a good chance of being convicted when the jury decides this case, which should happen sometime this summer. If he is, it will create a new opening for Obama’s opponents and a new opportunity for the press to probe his relationships within the bipartisan political machine that Illinoisans refer to to simply as ‘The Combine.’

Rezko’s trial has lifted the veil on Illinois’s infernally corrupt political establishment, and a government witness named Stuart Levine has taken on the role of a meth-snorting, double-dealing Virgil, guiding the public through it. Levine, a drug addict and crooked GOP operative, is testifying for the government in order to avoid spending the rest of his life in prison. Over the course of seven days of direct examination by the prosecution, he described a statewide network of fraud, extortion, and bribery that included key figures in the administration of Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat.

One of those figures was Tony Rezko, a top fund-raiser for and adviser to Blagojevich. Most of the public first heard of Rezko when Hillary Clinton mentioned him during a Democratic debate sponsored by CNN back in January. After Obama criticized Clinton for her ties to Wal-Mart, Clinton shot back with, “I was fighting against [conservative] ideas when you were practicing law and representing your contributor, Rezko, in his slum-landlord business in inner-city Chicago.”

Obama responded that, as a young associate at the law firm of Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland, he had done about five hours of work on a real estate deal involving a ‘church group’ and ‘this individual’ (meaning Rezko), implying that he barely knew the man. In fact, Rezko was one of Obama’s first political contacts in Chicago, and the two men had a close relationship until it became clear in early 2006 that Rezko would be indicted on corruption charges.

In 1990, when Obama was making headlines at Harvard for becoming the first black president of the law review, Rezko offered him a job at Rezmar, his burgeoning low-income-housing firm. Obama declined the offer and took a job at Davis Miner instead. In 1995, Obama spent 32 hours, not five, working on a deal that enabled a non-profit run by his boss, Allison Davis, to join with Rezmar in acquiring an old nursing home and converting it into subsidized housing for poor people, according to the Chicago Sun Times. That property - like many others Rezmar obtained using city, state, and federal loans - ended up in foreclosure at the taxpayers’ expense.

In 1995, Obama also launched his first bid for the Illinois state senate, and Rezko was among his first contributors. Approximately $10,000 to $15,000 of the $100,000 that Obama hauled in during that campaign came from Rezko, according to an estimate Obama provided to the Chicago Tribune. Rezko continued to raise money for Obama during his subsequent state-senate races, his unsuccessful run for Congress in 2000, his successful U.S. Senate run in 2004 - about $250,000 in all.

Finally, when the Obamas were looking for a new house in the summer of 2005, Rezko helped them buy their dream home by purchasing an adjoining lot they could not afford, then selling them a strip of the land on which they wanted to build a fence. The real estate deal attracted scrutiny after Rezko’s indictment, and Obama has called it a “bone-headed move.” But he told the Tribune that he did not see anything wrong with the deal at the time, because “I’ve known him for a long time. I assumed I would have seen a pattern [of corrupt behavior] over the past 15 years.” Never mind that, by the summer of 2005, the Chicago papers had run over 100 stories about the clouds gathering over Rezko’s head.

A month into the Rezko trial, it’s just as hard to believe that Obama didn’t see Rezko’s pattern of corrupt behavior as it was to believe that he sat in Jeremiah Wright’s pews for over 20 years and didn’t see him damning America. In both cases, the more likely alternative is that he looked the other way. Rezko’s whole business was the buying and selling of influence: It’s how he became one of Chicago’s biggest recipients of government loans to build low-income housing despite having no experience in real estate, and it’s how - prosecutors allege - he built a corrupt network of political operatives to enrich himself and buy more influence.

Stuart Levine was one of those lower-level operatives. At Rezko’s trial, he testified that he and Rezko conspired to use Levine’s position on two state boards to benefit themselves and buy influence with Governor Blagojevich. In one such instance, Levine told the jury, he directed the Illinois Teachers Retirement System, of which he was a trustee, to invest $50 million with a firm called Glencoe Capital. In exchange, Levine arranged for himself and Rezko to split a fradulent $500,000 ‘finder’s fee.’ Rezko allegedly told Levine to route his half to an associate named Joseph Aramanda.

According to the indictment against Rezko, Aramanda “used the money…in substantial part for the benefit of Rezko.” To that end, the indictment alleges, Aramanda received half of the money in March 2004 and wrote a $10,000 check to Barack Obama’s Senate campaign that same month.

Of course, Obama has donated any and all Rezko-related contributions, including those he received from Aramanda, to charity, and he says neither he nor anyone on his campaign had any reason to suspect that Aramanda had obtained the money by fraudulent means.

Levine also offered testimony, backed up by wiretap evidence, which put Obama’s former law-firm boss, Allison Davis, in the middle of an attempted quid pro quo. Davis’s friend Thomas Rosenberg, a financier and the producer of the film Million Dollar Baby, was in line for a $220 million allocation from the Teachers Retirement System, but Levine was holding it up so that he and Rezko could attempt to extort money from Rosenberg.

Davis allegedly approached Rezko on Rosenberg’s behalf and asked if a campaign contribution to Blagojevich would speed things along. Rezko told Davis to “call Stuart Levine.” Rezko and Levine planned to give Rosenberg a choice: either pay the $2 million ‘finder’s fee’ or raise $1.5 million for Blagojevich.

When Rosenberg realized he was the target of such a massive shakedown, he was furious. In a recorded phone call that prosecutors played for the jury, one of Levine’s co-schemers quoted Rosenberg’s reaction: “If [Tony Rezko and Blogojevich fund-raiser Chris Kelly are] going to do this to me and they think they’re gong to blackmail me, I’m going to take them down.”

Rosenberg’s threat convinced the alleged conspirators to back off, and - in the biggest bombshell to emerge during the trial so far - Levine testified that Rezko told him that Blagojevich had been informed of the situation and had agreed with Rezko’s proposed course of action: to back off from the extortion but also deny Rosenberg any more state contracts. Levine is not the most credible witness, but prosecutors played numerous recorded phone calls in which he discussed these schemes with co-conspirators in situations where it would have made little sense for him to lie.

If the allegations about Blagojevich are true, then such nakedly corrupt behavior at such a high level is bound to attract greater scrutiny from the national media on the problem of corruption in Illinois. Three out of the last seven elected Illinois governors have gone to jail for corruption, and based on the evidence presented at the Rezko trail, Blagojevich could well become the fourth.

For Obama, this scrutiny would present a problem, not because he was involved in the serious wrongdoing for which Rezko is on trial, but because the evidence presented at his trial has made clear that Rezko’s method of operating should have raised red flags for anyone doing business with him. Yet Obama did not distance himself from Rezko until the latter’s indictment made him politically radioactive. We saw him do the same thing when the media discovered Jeremiah Wright’s sermons. Obama wants us to believe he didn’t really know his friends of all.

There’s a bible verse that goes - “By his friends ye shall know him.” Do we truly know the real Barack?

Will a 9-Year-Old Change the Vaccine Debate?

(NYT) - There’s no question that the case of 9-year-old Hannah Poling of Athens, Ga., has fueled the controversy about childhood vaccines. But what’s less clear is whether it will help unlock the mysteries of autism.

Hannah was 19 months old and developing normally until 2000, when she received five shots against nine infectious diseases. She became sick and later was given a diagnosis of autism.

Late last year government lawyers agreed to compensate the Poling family on the theory that vaccines may have aggravated an underlying disorder affecting her mitochondria, the energy centers of cells. (To read more about the decision, click here.) Vaccine critics say the Hannah Poling settlement shows the government has finally conceded that vaccines cause autism. But government officials say Hannah’s case involved a rare medical condition, and there is still no evidence of a link between vaccines and autism.

Hannah’s father, Dr. Jon S. Poling, a practicing neurologist in Athens and clinical assistant professor at the Medical College of Georgia, says the case has shifted the autism debate forever and points to a promising new area of research.

Writing in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday, Dr. Poling says there is compelling evidence that mitochondrial disorders, like the one his daughter has, are strongly associated with autism.

To understand Hannah’s case, it is important to understand mitochondria, which act like batteries in our cells to produce energy critical for normal function…. Emerging evidence suggests that mitochondrial dysfunction may not be rare at all among children with autism. In the only population-based study of its kind, Portuguese researchers confirmed that at least 7.2 percent, and perhaps as many as 20 percent, of autistic children exhibit mitochondrial dysfunction. While we do not yet know a precise U.S. rate, 7.2 percent to 20 percent of children does not qualify as “rare.” In fact, mitochondrial dysfunction may be the most common medical condition associated with autism.

Dr. Poling urges the Institute of Medicine and public health officials to pursue research into mitochondrial conditions, which he describes as a “breakthrough in the science of autism.’’ He writes:

National public health leaders, including those at CDC, must now recognize the paradigm shift caused by this biological marker with regard to their current position of dispelling a vaccine-autism link. In light of the Hannah Poling concession, science must determine more precisely how large the mitochondrial autism subpopulation is: 1 percent, 7.2 percent, 20 percent?

To be sure, many health experts do not agree with Dr. Poling’s conclusions. The case has “added nothing to the discussions of what causes or doesn’t cause autism,” said Dr. Edwin Trevathan, director of the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On Friday, many of the main players involved in this debate — including Hannah’s mother and her grandparents, prominent vaccine skeptics and some of the government’s top vaccine researchers — took part in the federal government’s first-ever public meeting to discuss a government-wide research agenda to explore the safety of vaccines.

To read Dr. Poling’s complete essay, click here. Last month, Dr. Paul A. Offit, chief of the infectious diseases division of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, explained his view that the Hannah Poling case has been mischaracterized by vaccine critics. To read the piece, click here. Hannah Poling’s parents wrote this response to Dr. Offit’s report. Last month, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote this profile of Hannah and her parents.

It isn’t the vaccines that are causing the problem, it’s how and when the vaccines are given. Isn’t this so?