Book review: Fifty Years of Human Genetics. A Festschrift and Liber Amicorum to Celebrate the Life and Work of George Robert Fraser. In: Mayo O, Leach C, editors. 2007. [email protected]. ISBN 9781862547537
✍ Scribed by R. Brian Lowry
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2011
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 50 KB
- Volume
- 155
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1552-4825
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
This book, which was developed to celebrate the life and work of George Fraser, was the outcome of discussions between friends, colleagues, and former students of George's, and edited by Oliver Mayo and Carolyn Leach. It is a mixture of history, science, philosophy, and reminiscences and covers a lot of progress in human genetics in the last 50 years. There are eight major sections: History of Human and Medical Genetics, Biochemical and Molecular Genetics, Cancer Genetics, Childhood Sensory Defects, Clinical Genetics, Cytogenetics, Ethics, Statistical, and Population Genetics. Among the authors are many of the most eminent pioneers of human genetics of the last half century including Bodmer, Cavalli-Sforza, Epstein, Fraser (Clarke), McKusick, Morton (Newton), Motulsky, Opitz, and Schull to name just a few.
From George's writings, his distinguished CV and the comments of his peers it is clear that he is a man of outstanding intellect, with a broad knowledge not only of genetics but a flair for languages, mathematics, and original thinking. But he is more than that he is an immensely modest man with intense compassion for the disabled and those with disease. There is a genuine kindness to all his fellow men and women and no hint of any braggadocio or superiority. He is an original thinker. George started the cancer genetic clinic in Oxford and one of his contemporaries (Victoria Murday) said of George that ''he was a breath of fresh air, interested in a subject both for its academic and compassionate elements, with little by way of personal ambition.'' Cancer genetics clinics and cancer genetic epidemiology and their history in the United States is nicely covered by R. W. Miller.
It would be impossible to cover all the different chapters in the book but a few highlights are as follows. Since George made his early contributions in the field of childhood deafness and blindness it is not surprising to find a considerable section devoted to this, such as a review by Beighton of some of the eponymous names associated with deafness and visual defects. There is an interesting and amusing description of the collaboration between George and Peter Froggatt of Belfast on the Jervell/Lange-Nielsen syndrome, which describes how clinical and epidemiological research could be accomplished more easily in the days before institutional review boards. Professor Alan Stevenson who was director of the MRC Population Genetics Research Unit in Oxford telephoned Peter Froggatt to say that one of his ''young men'' (George) was interested in a recently described syndrome that manifested sensorineural hearing loss with fainting attacks sometimes leading to a fatal outcome and who had abnormal ECGs. Stevenson asked Froggatt to ''nip down to the Ulster School for the Deaf and Blind and take ECGs on any deaf pupils who had fits, faints, or turns.'' Froggatt did