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Thomas H. Shawker

Unlocking Your Genetic History: A Step-By-Step Guide to Discovering Your Family's Medical and Genetic Heritage (National Geneological Society Guide, 6) Paperback – August 1, 2004

by M.D. Shawker, Thomas H. (Author), Amy Johnson Crow (Editor)

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If Gilda Radner, one of the original cast of Saturday Night Live, had known of her family's medical pedigree and her ethnic heritage, she possibly could have prevented her death from ovarian cancer, the silent killer that tragically took her life at the age of 42. Cancer, mental illness, diabetes, and heart disease all have a hereditary component. Unlocking Your Genetic History explains how to integrate a family health history into your genealogy, how to get the appropriate medical information and analyze it, and how to design a medical pedigree in order to detect the genetic influence on your family's health. Early awareness, identification, and treatment can mean the difference between life and death.

The second part of the book discusses the exciting new field of using genetic testing to link you to your ancestors and verify your genealogy. Genetic testing was used to show that Thomas Jefferson fathered children with his slave Sally Hemings and has direct male descendents living today. It has shown that Jews retained their genetic identity despite the Jewish Diasporsa. DNA testing can help identify Native American ancestry, determine who settled Polynesia, and track the march of Genghis Khan as he swept out of Mongolia. Today DNA testing is being used in court and to identify human remains.

Unlocking Your Genetic History will help readers understand their family's medical and genetic history and help them understand the genetic revolution.

Print length

305 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Rutledge Hill Pr
Publication date

August 1, 2004
Dimensions

7.25 x 1 x 8.75 inches
ISBN-10

1401601448
ISBN-13

978-1401601447
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Thomas H. Shawker, M.D., is chief of the ultrasound section in the Imaging Sciences Program at the National Institutes of Health, a professor of radiology at the United Services University, and a fellow of the American College of Radiology. He is chairman of the National Genealogical Societys Family Health and Heredity Committee and president of the Prince Georges County Genealogical Society. He is the author or coauthor of over two hundred scientific publications and a speaker on both medical and genealogical topics. He and his wife live in Maryland.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Rutledge Hill Pr (August 1, 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 305 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1401601448
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1401601447
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.63 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.25 x 1 x 8.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,315,916 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #495 in Genetic Health
- #5,965 in Genealogy (Books)

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nonpareil

Fascinating view of genetic diseases

Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2014

Verified Purchase

I took college genetics fairly recently, after having retaken college biology which was required because of the knowledge explosion since my original college biology 40 years earlier. So perhaps I was in a position to appreciate this volume when I first purchased it not long after its publication. More recently I dug it out due to a genealogy project I did for a friend whose uncle had married a woman from a Huntington's chorea family, and thus had cousins who refused the DNA tests now available while deliberately reproducing, not knowing whether they were passing on that unfortunate autosomal dominant affliction.

A fascinating dilemma, thoroughly explored along with many others, in this book. If these issues interest you, I recommend reading this well-presented study which goes into explanatory detail that should suffice for those who have not had an education in genetics. I was sufficiently impressed that I bought a second copy as a gift for a cousin with great interest in genealogy.

2 people found this helpful

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L. Howes-Pijanowski

Very interesting and informative

Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2013

Verified Purchase

Fascinating updates on genetics and how they can assist genealogical research. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and using the forms in the back to aid my genealogical research

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J. M. Barkuloo

Good purchase!

Reviewed in the United States on December 7, 2014

Verified Purchase

OK. Good purchase!!

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N. Hostetler

Book on Genetics

Reviewed in the United States on January 25, 2012

Verified Purchase

Discovering our genetic heritage is a fascinating subject; if we go back far enough we are all related. I recommend this resource book.

One person found this helpful

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Michael K. Smith

Easily the best book (so far) on a difficult subject

Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2005

This is the fifth in a new series of instructional volumes sponsored by the National Genealogical Society, and when I read and reviewed the first four in September 2004, I was very impressed. The authors all were well known and trustworthy and their treatment of old subjects (such as basic research principles) and not so old (setting up a genealogy web site) was generally quite well done. But this one is somewhat different. The subject of "genetic genealogy" is still very much unknown territory to almost all genealogists, even the professionals. It's not even a "social science," so one has to acquire a certain amount of new background knowledge even before delving into it. This author is also less likely to be known to most genealogists outside his own specialty: He's a medical doctor, a Section Chief at the National Institutes of Health -- although he has also been president of the Prince George's County Genealogical Society and chairs the NGS committee on Family Health and Heredity, so he certainly can't be called a beginner. Personally, I've been "doing genealogy" for more than three decades, but my background is in history, library science, and archival management, with no training and very little experience in the life sciences. Over the past few years, I've read dozens of articles in all sorts of journals on the subject of applying recent breakthroughs in DNA mapping to family lineages, but even though I've been intrigued by the possibilities, the result has generally been to confuse myself even further. I'm pleased to say that Shawker has supplied an antidote to my ignorance.

The first section lays out the reasons you need to know about your family's health history, because "ignorance is not bliss." This is especially true among Acadian families, as in other geographically or culturally isolated populations (Ashkenazic Jews, Amish, Afrikaners, Pacific Islanders) which suffer from a predisposition to assorted diseases and conditions. He follows this with a primer on the nature and process of genetics that is very well written and easy to understand (even for me), with a full explanation of dominant and recessive traits. He includes plenty of case studies, too, from King George III and the Romanovs to Gilda Radner. Then comes a section on compiling a health history, drawing up a medical pedigree, interpreting the results, and being aware of the warning signs for various important and common genetic diseases.

The part of the book I read most closely is that which explains in great detail, with many examples and illustrations, how the Y-chromosome is passed on, unchanged, from father to son to grandson, and so on, through the male line, and how the mitochondrial DNA is likewise passed without change from mother to daughter to granddaughter. The famous Thomas Jefferson-Sally Hemmings case provides a good example of how all this works, and how one can use deduction to track lineages that are a mix of males and females. Numerous charts and diagrams also increase one's understanding. Shawker also lays out a strategy for developing a family association DNA project to determine the relationships between groups with identical surnames, and he repeatedly makes the point that no testing program can prove anything: It can only serve as another research tool in conjunction with more traditional genealogical methods.

Finally, the author addresses the ethical and legal issues inherent in genetic testing, whether for family research or to identify an inherited tendency to contract a disease, and includes a lengthy guide to other resources on the Internet - especially important in a fast-developing area like this. There's an excellent bibliography, too. Shawker is that rare scientist who can write coherently for the layman and I can recommend this excellent work to any individual or library with an interest in genealogical methodology.

83 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

great seller

Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2009

Book that I ordered was just as I expected. I would buy from this seller again and would recommend him/her to others.

3 people found this helpful

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Unlocking Your Genetic History: A Step-By-Step Guide to Discovering Your Family's Medical and Genetic Heritage (National Geneological Society Guide, 6) Paperback – August 1, 2004

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