The Sexual ‘Root’ of Genetic Diseases

I would like to share my experience from one of my teaching-training sessions, where I

was experimenting with the ten WHO’s Life skills methods [1] while teaching

epidemiology of infectious diseases. The topic under discussion was “the concept of

communicability’ in diseases. The debate centered around the limits to which the

`concept to communicability’ could be stretched, in the epidemiological frame of

reference. The circular reasoning employed by the students was, that in Sexually

Transmitted Diseases (STDs), sexual contact/the semen of an infected person is deposited

into the susceptible individual through the mode of sex, resulting in the STD. The

creative thinking skill applied by the students, to drive home the analogy was that for the

genetic disease to get transmitted to next generation, require a couple with genetic traits

to get involved in sexual act, to reproduce offspring with the genetic disorder. Hence the

genetic diseases e.g. Sickle cell anemia, could be seen as sexually transmitted disease.

The circular reasoning was, had the parents with the genetic traits not had sex, the

resultant genetic diseases e.g. Sickle Cell anemia would not have got transmitted to the

next generation. So, the genetic diseases, in essence are sexually transmitted, wherein the

carrier gene on the sex chromosome, whether dominant or recessive trait, is being carried

by the semen as the medium. Hence the Epidemiologic triad of Agent (the gene), Host

(the sickle cell trait carrier) and the Environment (procreating by couple with sickle cell
trait) is satisfied, hence why can’t genetic diseases also be categorized under Sexually

Transmitted Diseases (STDs)? The debate was settled by the way of Critical Thinking

skills applied through the germ theory and Koch’s postulates for communicable diseases.

May be as some say, life itself is a sexually transmitted disease!

Reference:

1. WHO/MNH/PSF/93.7A. Geneva. WHO. (1995). Development and Communication in Action.

Rajan R Patil,
India.
rajanpatil@yahoo.com