Alpha Thalassemia Essay

I. Alpha thalassemia is a blood disorder that reduces the production of hemoglobin, which is the protein in red blood cells responsible for carrying oxygen throughout the body. Those affected experience a shortage of efficient oxygen-carrying red blood cells, causing anemia, and manifesting in the observable signs of: pale skin, weakness, fatigue, or serious complications when coupled with other illnesses. Thalassemia is a blood disorder passed down through families (since it is inherited siblings may share this disease) in which the body makes an abnormal form of hemoglobin, resulting in excessive destruction of red blood cells and diminishing the affected person’s normal, healthy red blood cells. Damage to the body is caused by either a genetic mutation or a deletion of HBA1 and HBA2 genes. Because each person inherits two alpha-globin alleles from each parent, when both parents are missing at least one alpha-globin allele, the child is at risk of having Hb Bart syndrome, HbH disease, or alpha thalassemia depending on the number of missing working alleles. Involving the genes HBA1 and HBA2, alpha-thalassemia is due to impaired production of either 1, 2, 3, or 4 alpha globin chains, leading to an excess of beta globin chains. There are four copies of the gene instructing the body to make alpha globin; the more functioning genes a person has, the more alpha globin is made, whereas the number of non-working genes determines what type of alpha thalassemia a person has since when one or more of the alpha globin genes is not working properly, less alpha globin is made. There exist different types of alpha thalassemia: having three normal alpha genes results in a silent carrier state; two normal alpha genes results in mic...

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... a potential indirect association, since that is the necessary condition to go any further. The language of the Bill states a laboratory must have at least achieved a partially successful statistical threshold to carry on with further testing. However, the laboratory and scientists will no longer be bound by the EMR or EKR restrictions which depend on the four major ethnic groups in the FBI’s allele frequency database, meaning the scientists at testing laboratories will be responsible for determining if further testing is needed based on the sample in question. Unsolved crimes will continue to haunt victims and their families if our state’s forensic scientists are denied the ability to conduct further testing if the statistical threshold value is met, since there are new familial testing innovations in the field that may help us decipher otherwise cold cases.