Word: commoner
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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With this insight, scientists could more accurately predict an individual's vulnerability to such obviously genetic diseases as cystic fibrosis and could eventually develop new drugs to treat or even prevent them. The same would be true for more common disorders like heart disease and cancer, which at the very least have large genetic components. Better knowledge of the genome could speed development of gene therapy -- the actual alteration of instructions in the human genome to eliminate genetic defects...
Harvard geneticist Philip Leder cites many common diseases -- hyper-tension, allergies, diabetes, heart disease, mental illness and some (perhaps all) cancers -- that have a genetic component. Unlike Huntington's and Tay-Sachs diseases, which are caused by a single defective gene, many of these disorders have their roots in several errant genes and would require genetic therapy far more sophisticated than any now even being contemplated. Still, says Leder, "in the end, genetic mapping is going to have its greatest impact on these major diseases...
...sides go through a diplomatic grope in search of common ground, neither expects the CFE talks to be a kaffeeklatsch. (The talks were originally given the acronym CAFE, but that was discarded as too frivolous.) It is a promising sign that negotiators chose last week to accentuate the positive. "They called for several things which sound pretty reasonable," said Ledogar of his East bloc counterparts. Concurred Oleg Grinievsky, chief of the Soviet delegation: "The very first hours witnessed an exchange of positions, rather than recriminations." Baker and Shevardnadze boosted optimism by setting a May date in Moscow to discuss resumption...
Finding a cure for the common cold has been an elusive goal for generations. The reason: there are more than 100 different types of rhinoviruses, the culprits responsible for about half of all colds. Now scientists may have the key to warding off the sniffles. Reporting in the journal Cell last week, two separate research teams announced the discovery of a cell molecule to which rhinoviruses attach themselves. When the cold viruses bind to the molecule, known as the ICAM-1 receptor, they infect the cell...
...blood disease suffered by people of African descent who have two copies of an abnormal gene. A person who has only one copy of the gene, however, will not be stricken with anemia and will in fact have an unusual resistance to malaria. That is why the gene remains common in African populations...