Mapping Fate: A Memoir of Family, Risk, and Genetic Research - Softcover

Wexler, Alice

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520207416 ISBN 13: 9780520207417

Publisher: University of California Press, 1996

Synopsis

In Mapping Fate, Alice Wexler tells the story of a family at risk for a hereditary, incurable, fatal disorder: Huntington's disease, once called Huntington's chorea. That her mother died of the disease, that her own chance of inheriting it was fifty-fifty, that her sister and father directed much of the extraordinary biomedical research to find the gene and a cure, make Wexler's story both astonishingly intimate and scientifically compelling.

Alice Wexler's graceful and eloquent account goes beyond the specifics of Huntington's disease to explore the dynamics of family secrets, of living at risk, and the drama and limits of biomedical research. Mapping Fate will be a touchstone for anyone with questions about genetic illness and the possibilites and perils of genetic testing.

About this title

About the Author

Alice Wexler is affiliated with the Center for the Study of Women at University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of Emma Goldman in America (1984) and Emma Goldman in Exile (1989).

From the Back Cover

"A fabulous read. . . . a book about love, scientific research, family fights, duplicity, compassion, courage and pain. It is brilliantly written by one of the principal characters in this real-life drama. You'll be riveted."―Ann Landers

From the Inside Flap

"A fabulous read. . . . a book about love, scientific research, family fights, duplicity, compassion, courage and pain. It is brilliantly written by one of the principal characters in this real-life drama. You'll be riveted."—Ann Landers

Reviews

"[Mapping Fate is] made of heartbreak but so full of fascinating information of every kind that it has the extraordinary power to transcend pain. . . . This is an intense, beautiful, serious book. It reminds us that life can be awful, but that human beings carry the capacity to be heroic beyond measure."

Memoir of a family living under the shadow of the genetically transmitted Huntington's disease, two of whose members become prominent researchers in the quest for a cure.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520207416
• ISBN 13: 9780520207417
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 350