For the past eighty years, our world has created a label for a certain population that has an extra-chromosome attached to their twenty-first chromosome. This label is medically called Down syndrome or Trisomy 21. This chromosomal deformity affects one in every one hundred individuals (Pope and Gilbert, 2014). In recent years, research and medical advances have allowed pregnant women to know whether or not their child will have this diagnosis before the child is even born. Many times, when women are faced with this dilemma, they are given the difficult decision on whether or not they would like to abort the fetus. In 2011, research found that nine out of ten women who received prenatal testing that tested positive for Down syndrome would opt …show more content…
Many times, individuals with Down syndrome are looked upon as dumb and incoherent to their surroundings. For years, individuals with Down syndrome were not allowed to attend local public schools to receive an education. Doctors still use improper wording when delivering the news to new parents about their newborns diagnosis, such as saying that it is bad news (Wise, 2016). Many places, individuals with Down syndrome are refused to be seen by certain doctors because their pre-assumed medical conditions. Many insurances do not want to cover the individuals for the same reasons doctors would not want to see them. There are reports of families being told their child cannot participate in certain activities because of their disability (Hennessey, 2015). From birth, doctors are already implying the disorder itself is not good. The diagnosis it not expected in anyways, but there is a lack of knowledge about how great the diagnosis can be. Down syndrome can be more than the challenges it …show more content…
There is a wide variety of medical issues associated with Down syndrome, it can be heart defects, hypothyroidism, gastrointestinal problems, problems with eye sight and hearing, among other things. One of the most common medical challenges is that the child can be born with a congenital heart defect (Gupta and Kabra, 2014). The defect is usually a hole in the heart, which can vary in its placing. Some of these defects require heart surgery, meaning the child at just weeks old will undergo a high-risk surgery. Along with heart defects, individuals with Down syndrome are susceptible to having hypothyroidism as well as gastrointestinal malformations (Gupta and Kabra, 2014). These issues can be fixed with medicine, but occasionally need surgical intervention. Each problem associated with Down syndrome, does not occur in each individual. For instance, individuals with Down syndrome have a possibility of having a vertebrae defect, called Atlantoaxial instability, which means that if there is a more than 5mm of space in between the C1 and C2 vertebrae it can lead to dislocation (Van Dyke and Gahagan, 1988). If not caught early enough it can cause death. There used to be a high death rate among individuals with Down syndrome prior to the 1970s, due to the associated medical conditions. The occurrence of this happening is only one percent of the Down