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Transcription: [00:00:21]
{SPEAKER name="Watson Davis"}
Our Adventures in Science guest today is Dr. Melville H. Manson, Scientific Director of the Muscular Dystrophy Associations of America.

[00:00:30]
{SPEAKER name="Watson Davis"}
And Dr. Manson, muscular dystrophy is a very serious disease and perhaps you'd better tell us just what it is and how serious it really is.


[00:00:44]
{SPEAKER name="Melville H. Manson"}
Well, Mr. Davis, muscular dystrophy is a chronic deteriorating disease of muscles, characterized by wasting and degeneration, replacement of the muscle tissue by fatty tissue and connective tissue, and it's inevitably a fatal disease at the present time.

[00:01:06]
{SPEAKER name="Watson Davis"}
Do many people have it, I mean, you mentioned children, particularly?

[00:01:11]
{SPEAKER name="Melville H. Manson"}
We don't know, Mr. Davis, the exactly number of patients who have muscular dystrophy in this country. It is estimated that there are 200,000 men, women, and children with this disease.

[00:01:25]
{SPEAKER name="Melville H. Manson"}
It is a non-reportable disease because two-thirds of the incidence occurs in children and many times because of the fatal prognosis these children are hidden away and shielded from public view so that an exact census is not known. But we think that 200,000 is perhaps the conservative estimate.

[00:01:49]
{SPEAKER name="Watson Davis"}
Well, are these children who contract this disease? And by the way, what causes it? Is it a infectious disease, or what?


[00:01:59]
{SPEAKER name="Melville H. Manson"}
No, it is not an infectious disease. It is not a contagious disease. Uh, what causes it is the reason to be, really, for the muscular dystrophy associations of America. In children, which is the most common form, it is hereditary in about thirty-five percent of the instances.