Abraham Lincoln:
Famous people who suffer from genetic diseases such as hemophilia have often drawn great public attention and curiosity. The successes of such people have inspired members of society to pursue excellence in their areas of specializations despite their delicate health conditions.
Abraham Lincoln reigned as the first President of the United States for close to four years. He is favorably remembered for giving great leadership directions during the Civil War of the 1980s and for his Emancipation Proclamation that led to the freeing of Confederate slaves.
It has also been postulated that Lincoln had Marfan syndrome:
In 1962, a Los Angeles physician diagnosed a 7-year-old boy with Marfan syndrome, a dominant genetic disorder that leads to a whole variety of complications, including early death from a ruptured heart. The patient was an indirect descendent of Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln left no direct progeny), and the physician speculated that perhaps Lincoln had the same disorder.
Stephen Hawking:
Stephen Hawking - Professor Stephen Hawking is a well-known example of a person with MND, and has lived for more than 40 years with the disease. Stephen Hawking: The internationally renowned Physicist, has defied time and doctors pronouncements that he would not live 2-years beyond his 21 years of age when he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS); also known as Lou Gehrigs disease. The symptoms are very similar to those of CP, Hawking cannot walk, talk, breathe easy, swallow and has difficulty in holding up his head. Hawking, 51, was told 30 years ago, when he was a not-very-remarkable college student. Read more: www.disabled-world.com...
Pope John Paul II:
Pope John Paul II - (18 May 1920 2 April 2005) Pope John Paul II reigned as the 264th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church and Sovereign of the State of the Vatican City from 16 October 1978, until his death, almost 27 years later. On 13 May 1981 John Paul II was shot and critically wounded by Mehmet Ali Ag(ca, a Turkish gunman, as he entered St. Peter's Square to address an audience. He was rushed into the Vatican complex, then to the Gemelli Hospital, where Dr. Francesco Crucitti, a noted surgeon, had just arrived by police escort after hearing of the incident. The Pope had lost almost three-quarters of his blood, a near-exsanguination, despite the fact that the bullets missed his mesenteric artery and abdominal aorta. He underwent five hours of surgery to treat his massive blood loss and abdominal wounds. John Paul II's health suffered a major blow after the first failed assassination attempt. He went on to a full recovery, and sported an impressive physical condition throughout the 1980s. Starting about 1992, however, his health slowly declined. He rarely walked in public and began to suffer from an increasingly slurred speech and difficulty in hearing. Most experts agreed that the frail pontiff suffered from Parkinson's disease, although it wasn't until 2003 that the Vatican finally confirmed it. Read more: www.disabled-world.com...
These are just a very few people who have made an indelible mark on history, and have also suffered from some form of genetic disorder. Were there parents sterilized because the state deemed them "unfit" to propagate, no one would have ever heard of Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Hawking, or Pope John Paul II.
