Page 147 - Genomic Medicine in Emerging Economies

136 CHAPTER 7: Experience in the Development of Genomics Companies

of mutations related to each pathology and projects subsidized by the state
were used in the presentations of scientific works in medical congresses.
“With an information folder under our arm, we visited the main neurology,
hematology, or genetics centers of public hospitals or related private
institutions, explained who we were, and waited until some professional
received us. Luckily for us we were welcomed. We were bringing the future.”
These first meetings often led to the arrangement of training seminars.
The first population survey was conducted in 1999 and was based on autoso-
mal dominant polycistic kidney disease (Iglesias et al., 1997) and on neurode-
generative diseases (Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy, spinocerebellar
ataxias, Charcott-Marie-Tooth disease type 1A , and Huntington’s corea dis-
10
11
ease ) (Baranzini et al., 1998).
FORENSIC GENETICS

Fabian was a man who had divorced and had two daughters. When he thought
that he would never fall in love again, he met Marcela, a 22-year-old woman.
After a while, Marcela invited him to dinner at her house to meet her family.
When Fabian saw Marcela’s mother, he immediately recognized her. She was
Roxana, his 17-year-old girlfriend. Neither Fabian nor Roxana said they knew
each other, but a few days later she called him to arrange a meeting. They met
in a bar, and Roxana told him that when he left her, she had learned that she
was pregnant. However, since she did not want to force him to be the father of
a daughter they had not planned for, she has never told him. At that moment
she told him that Marcela was his biological daughter. When Marcela heard
the story, she wanted to corroborate it, and, together with Fabian, they showed
up in our laboratory to obtain a paternity test. And while we took the samples,
they confessed their love story. The result determined that there was a prob-
ability of 99.99% that Fabian was Marcela’s biological father.
As we mentioned before, on March 24, 1976, the democratic government of
the Argentine Republic was overthrown by another coup d’état. From that
moment, a period called the “National Reorganization Process” began.

The military forces in power launched a repressive political system, the aim
of which was to impose “order” through terror. It was the bloodiest stage in
Argentine history, in which thousands of people, including students, work-
ers, trade unionists, intellectuals, and professionals, were kidnapped by the
armed forces, tortured in clandestine detention centers, and murdered. Most
of these people remain missing. It is estimated that about 340 clandestine
detention centers were scattered throughout the national territory. Among the

10 A neurological inherited disorder.
11 A neurological inherited disorder.