Today we will tell you today is national what day. While National Trisomy Day 21 remains the main cause of mental retardation in people with intellectual disabilities, it remains poorly known to the general public. Launched at the initiative of the Federation of Associations of study for the social inclusion of people carrying trisomy 21 , the day of trisomy 21, is organized everywhere in France on 3 rd Sunday in November.
National Trisomy Day 21 November 20
Contacting and getting to know people with trisomy 21 makes it possible, beyond the speeches and intentions, to change our eyes.
A great scientist has, throughout his life, worked in this direction: Professor Legume …
Discovery of trisomy 21 by Professor Jérôme Lejeune
In 1958, at the age of 32, he discovers the first chromosomal anomaly in humans: trisomy 21.
Known as “mongolism” and mistakenly regarded as racial degeneration, it is actually due to the triple presence of chromosome 21.
For the first time in the world, a link is established between a state of mental debility and a chromosomal aberration. The parents of children with Down’s syndrome know that their child’s disability is an accident, called trisomy 21. He and his collaborators then discover the mechanism of many other chromosomal diseases, thus paving the way for cytogenetics and modern genetics.
Head of the cytogenetics unit at the Hôpital Necker Enfants Malades in Paris, his consultation becomes one of the most numerous in the world.
He studies with his team more than 30,000 chromosomal records and treats more than 9,000 people with a disease of intelligence.
He is convinced that any progress towards the cure of one of these diseases will give the key to caring for others.
What worries him most of all is to one day succeed in curing his little patients who come to see him from all over the world. Now, to his great despair, it becomes “fashionable” to suppress the patient who is incapable of curing. While the results of his research should have allowed the advancement of medicine in the path of healing, they are used to detect as soon as possible the children carrying these diseases and to suppress them more often.
He then decides to defend his patients publicly. This commitment to serve the most disinherited among us has earned him the ostracism of the powerful but the friendship of the little ones and those who resemble them.
