EFL Home

Inheritance Influenced By Sex

Some years ago the crown prince of Spain, prince allonso, exiled from his native land because of the turn of political fortunes, was living in a large city in the United States. One night he was driving along one of the main boulevards of the city when another car pulled out of a side road. There was a screeching of brakes, a sudden crash, and the sound of shattering glass as the cars collided. It was not a serious collision, but prince alfonso was cut by the flying glass. the cuts were minor, but they were bleeding profusely and continued bleeding long after the normal time for blood to clot. He was rushed to a hospital, but too late; he died from the loss of blood.

This event illustrates the unusual disease of haemophilia, or ‘’bleeder’s disease’’, that has plagued the royal families of Europe for many years. Persons with this disease have blood that does not clot properly and are in constant danger of excessive bleeding from small injuries. One of the factors in the blood that is necessary for normal clotting is missing, and will occur eventually, the time is greatly prolonged. Normal blood clots within 2 to 8 minutes after it flows from the blood vessels, but in persons with haemophilia this time may be extended to 30 minutes or even many hours.
Hemophilia is an affliction known since ancient times. Among the early Hebrews there were cases of males infants who bled to death after circumcision. Special dispensations which were made whereby sons of women who came from hemophilic families did not have to be circumcised, show that some understanding of the transmission pattern of this disease existed. An Arabian surgeon of the eleventh century, Albucasis, described boys in a certain village who also would bleed to death is their gums were rubbed harshly and who also would bleed excessively from slights wounds. In all these reports the disease seems to have appeared only in males and followed an unusual skip-generation pattern. A man with the disease wno survived and married would have normal children, but grandsons though his daughters would be afflicted.

The gene for hemophilia seems to have been introduced into the royal families of Europe through Queen Victoria of England, probably through a mutation in a germ cell of one of her parents…