Dear Abby, Dear Abby..
AXYS was founded on the response to a letter to Ann Landers sent by our founder, Melissa Aylstock. David Drexler, a long-time volunteer with AXYS and member of our communications committee, has written a beautiful, compelling letter to Dear Abby. Please write to Dear Abby and share your letter with us.
David’s letter:
Dear Abby,
I’m writing you today to alert your readers to chromosome anomalies that affect one in five hundred people, male and female. Although they are the most common of the chromosome anomalies they are also seldom diagnosed, most often by amniocentesis or in a fertility workup.
Every cell of a normal body has 23 pairs of chromosomes and on those chromosomes are the genes that control who and what we are. The sex chromosomes (23rd pair) dictate sex. A normal male has XY chromosomes and a normal female has XX. For reasons we don’t know, in some cases there are more than two sex chromosomes with an extra X, called 47,XXY or just XXY. There can also be more than two Xs and more than one Y for example trisomy X or 47,XXX.
