Can Down Syndrome Be Treated?

摘要

Brian Skotko remembers clearly when he first became an advocate for people with Down syndrome. It was on the playground in grade school, listening to his classmates use the R-word. "Someone would just casually say, 'I'm such a retard,' or 'You're such a retard,' " he says. Even at that young age, Skotko found himself speaking up for his younger sister Kristin, who has the typical constellation of physical features and intellectual disability caused by having a third copy of chromosome 21. "I got to see firsthand what it's like to grow up with an extra chromosome," he says. "I learned along the way that some of the struggles are not defined by your chromosomes, but by the community that you live in."