Speech On Sickle Cell Disease

What if blood were poison to the body? Imagine going through countless blood transfusions and bone marrow transplants. Many people are blessed never to have to worry about those things their entire lives, but that life is a reality for a person with sickle cell disease. Some compare sickle cell to cancer, but they are very different. Similarly both have severe effects on the body from the diseases themselves and from the strenuous treatment procedures. Through all the hardships sufferers, have to have hope and never give up. Arnold Schwarzenegger once said, “Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength” (qtd. in “Strength Quotes”). This …show more content…
Sickle cell is an inherited blood disease, meaning that the disease is received by the transmission of hereditary factors (“Sickle Cell Disease: Symptoms and Causes”). So anyone who is around a sickle cell disease patient will not get the disease or contract any of the complications and symptoms that arise from the disease (“Sickle Cell Disease: Symptoms and Causes”). For sickle cell disease to be present an autosomal recessive pattern or condition must be present. That means that both parents must pass down a copy of the mutated gene, which is the hemoglobin *S gene (“Sickle Cell Disease: Learn.Genetics”). Sickle cell disease is confusing for most people because of the perplexed genetics make-up, the trait, and chances of their child getting the disease. Chances of getting the disease is determined by both of the parents’ genetic make-ups. If one parent has the sickle cell disease and the other parent is normal, their offspring will carry the sickle cell trait. If one parent has sickle cell disease and the other parent has the sickle cell trait, the chance of having a child with the sickle cell disease is fifty percent (“About Sickle Cell Disease [SCD]”). If both parents carry the sickle cell trait, the child is twenty-five percent likely to have sickle cell (“About Sickle Cell Disease [SCD]”). Some families do not have to worry about sickle cell disease affecting them, but a broad number of ethnic …show more content…
Of those seventy thousand almost ninety percent of those sufferers are African American (“Sickle Cell Disease Information”). African Americans carry the trait more than any other race. One in twelve African Americans have the sickle cell trait (“Sickle Cell Disease: Symptoms and Causes”). Sickle cell disease also affects Hispanic people, as well as those from Mediterranean areas and those of Mediterranean heritage. Spain, France, Monaco, Turkey, Palestine, Israel, Syria, Egypt, and Greece are just some Mediterranean countries and areas where sickle cell disease is concentrated. Sickle cell disease is also present among those with Indian, Latin American, Native American, and Middle Eastern heritage (“Sickle Cell Disease: Symptoms and Causes”). Those make up the other ten percent that the African American heritages leave behind (“Sickle Cell Disease: Symptoms and Causes”). Those people from foreign regions are more likely to be carriers because of prevention of malaria. Sickle cell trait and sickle cell disease actually helps districts where endemic malaria, is present. The trait and disease helps because sickle hemoglobin gets in the way of the parasite that infects red blood cells (“Sickle Cell Disease: Learn.Genetics”). This also reduces the amount of parasites that attack and infect the susceptible host, giving them more protection than others (“Sickle Cell Disease: