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Article: OP-ED; Our family tree looks for branches.
- Article from:
- The Boston Herald
- Article date:
- November 27, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Boston Herald. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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I rejoiced when I heard the results of the Jefferson family DNA analysis.
As a practicing pediatrician who holds a doctorate in genetics, I marveled at a new technology whose development was little more than a dream for those of us performing genetics research a decade or two ago.
And this technology was little more than a brew of magic and science for those writing science fiction tales in the decades after James Watson and Francis Crick unraveled the DNA double helices in 1953. It is unlikely that Watson and Crick knew what was at the bottom of the Pandora's box they had just opened.
And Gregor Mendel, the 19th-century Austrian monk later ...