A little bit of blood goes a long way

This post ain't as much about sweet stuff as it is about scary stuff. There are these demons with several heads. They are known as Syndromes and the simplest to name and remember is called Down Syndrome. These are demons that could attack a baby even when he or she is on his or her way out. Here on, I will use He/His/ Him to refer to a baby that could very well turn out to be a girl. No apology!

This is the age of Big Data and Rocket Science, and for fuck's sake, Nuclear Weapons and whatnot. It is kind of hard to believe that Down Syndrome is battled against using probability and statistics. It is like sending a bunch of glasses-wearing, calculator-wielding geeks to fight against monsters with three heads and fifteen legs.

They told me that this Ultrasound, the one at the end of 14 weeks is a really cool one. They will show your baby in high resolution, you will see him move around, and have as much fun as you want for a pretty decently long period of time. The doctor in the meantime will measure his head and limbs and take a deep look at how the different organs look like, and very important, the general observation of the shape of his head. They will then match this observation with the parent's ethnicity and country of origin and the blood type. They will then go to a dungeon and churn numbers and in about half an hour, they will come back with something that is the best they can do but something that frustrated the hell out of me. They will tell you the probability ... mark my words.. probability of your baby's being stung by one of those demons including Down's syndrome. Now, for the uninitiated probability sounds like -- there is 10% chance that your baby may have this characteristic or something similar. Basically, they are saying that if you had a 100 babies, about 10 of them may have shaken their hand with the wrong guy.

It creeped me out totally. It frustrated me to no end. It made my tears swell up. It is unacceptable to me.

Luckily, after we went through this, the sweet kid-faced nurse came to us and introduced us to a man sitting in a nearby cubicle. She said, "This is John (not real name) and he is doing something that will arm us with molecules and medicines instead of probability and statistics to fight these demons."

Here is the science of it: Some awesome loveable geek has figured out that mom's blood has traces of DNA from the baby's cells. Now this is totally awesome because so far, the world knew that mom's blood and baby's blood never mix up and hence, the layman would think DNA as well doesn't mix up. Now, we know that it does. So, the geeks have figured out a way to extract that DNA from a small sample of mommy blood, and absolutely go to town on hardcore genetics and say things with certainty and not probability. This is so awesome. Imagine the applications of this in the life of parents who get false negatives (ignore if false negatives is too complex!)

So, wife duly gave her blood. 25000 women like her are giving a syringe full of their blood so that their sisters in future can enjoy their pregnancy in peace. Amen!

May the venture succeed!