Moonrise: One Family, Genetic Identity, and Muscular Dystrophy Book

Moonrise is a heartrending memoir about Penny Wolfson's family, her son Ansel (now seventeen years old), and his pro-gressive disability, caused by the genetic disease Duchenne muscular dystrophy. For more than a hundred years after the French neurologist G.A.B. Duchenne first described this devasta-ting dis-order, research had produced few answers about the origin or the cure. But between the end of 1986 and the be-ginning of 1988-just before Ansel's diagnosis-the Duchenne gene was isolated and sequenced, and accurate prenatal testing became available. As Wolfson traces her son's development and the impact of his disability on her world view, questions about the disease-causing mutation persist: What does knowledge of the self on a molecular level mean? Is genetic self-knowledge our goal now, just as knowledge of the psyche was in the last century? Moonrise is an essential contribution to the dialogue about genetics, as well as a deeply moving story about a remarkable child and his family.Read More