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Health Blog Obit: Victor McKusick, Father of Medical Genetics

Posted on July 24, 2008

Victor McKusick, a cardiologist who helped to invent the field of medical genetics just four years after the structure of DNA was discovered, died Tuesday. He was 86.McKusick was drawn to genetics by a single patient with Marfan syndrome, a rare disorder characterized by multiple symptoms including tall stature and problems with the heart, blood vessels eyes and skin. McKusick figured out that all of the problems associated with the disease were caused by a single genetic defect.He made a radical shift in 1957, leaving a promising career in cardiology to found the division of medical genetics ...

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