During Joseph Merrick's short life, he was a subject of both mockery and scientific befuddlement. Known as the "Elephant Man," Merrick's abnormal physical development led to work as a traveling curiosity and pokes and prods by puzzled doctors. Even after his death in 1890, Merrick's unusual legacy lived on: his life became the topic of several books, an award-winning play, and a David Lynch movie.
And now, more than a century after Merrick's death, scientists think that analyzing his remains might finally pin down what genetic ailment the Elephant Man actually suffered from. As the BBC reports, a team at King College London plan to carefully extract DNA from Merrick's skeleton in order to sequence his genome. From there, they hope to...
via The Verge - All Posts http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/29/4673054/using-the-elephant-mans-skeleton-to-unlock-medical-mysteries
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