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Sickle-cell anemia is a bad thing plain and simple. It will cause many other things to kill you. So what you are saying is, once you have this particular disease, you can't get this other disease. But dude, you are still susceptible to many others. If you have a disease to start with you are not better off. Now listen carefully....
A person with sickle-cell anemia is missing the information needed in their DNA to produce correctly formed red blood cells (loss of information). Sickle cell anemia affects the hemoglobin gene by encoding the wrong protein in the RNA protein synthesis that normally builds and maintains hemoglobin. The “mutation” is not a positive thing. (Since the DNA “program” RNA is not working the way it’s supposed to, but it’s still all the same information, just scrambled. If it was working in the correct order there cannot be an abnormal amount of hemoglobin) It doesn’t make you a healthier person because if you have it, nothing can be more opposite.
The symptoms of sickle cell disease are caused by abnormal hemoglobin. Hemoglobin, the main protein inside red blood cells, carries oxygen from the lungs and takes it to every part of the body. Normally, red blood cells are round and flexible and flow easily through blood vessels. But in sickle cell disease, the abnormal hemoglobin causes red blood cells to become stiff and, under the microscope, may look like a C-shaped farm tool called a sickle. These stiffer red blood cells can get stuck in tiny blood vessels, cutting off the blood supply to nearby tissues. This is what causes pain (called a sickle cell pain episode or crisis) and sometimes organ damage in sickle cell disease. Sickle-shaped red blood cells also die and break down more quickly than normal red blood cells, resulting in anemia.
Now you can say it is a "benefit" because you can't get malaria, but am I really better off because I have SCA? When you have sickle-cell anemia, you are more susceptible to:
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Now at this point, sly start to list infections.
Im sorry that you said this a while ago, but i was just reading through this forum, and I noticed that you completely don't understand what it means to say that people who get sickl cell disease are more resistaint to maleria.
this does NOT mean that when u get this desiese, all of the sudden you become resistaint. Sickle cell desiese is a genetic disorder which is resessive. This means that in order to acually HAVE this disease and show its symptoms, you need to get the disease from BOTH parents. If you do, then u get the symptoms like what sly listed. If you only get the gene for this condition from ONE of your parents, you do NOT EXPRESS THE DISEASE therfore you dont get the symptoms.
Furthermore, if you only get one of the resessive genes then you don't get the disease, but this has another effect. You also become more resistent to maleria. I don't know the exact biology of HOW you become resistant, but i know that you do. If you want to know you can look it up.
Therfore, the resessive gene which causes sickle cell anima does help poeple who do not have both of those genes because it makes them more resistant to maleria.
I just wanted to clear this up because sly seemed to talk about it alot in that post.
At one point, the mutation that helped make people less prone to maleria was a positive thing and the fact that MOST people only had one of the resesive genes rather then both, alowed the gene to presist.
Im sorry about any spelling errors and im also sorry if this point was already addresed.