Odd Adventures in Tooth Fairy History

By Jacqueline Antonovich

Recently, my daughter lost her very first baby tooth. It happened one afternoon while eating lunch; her loose tooth just popped right out of her mouth and into her bowl of ramen noodles. After I fished out the tooth with my fingers and wiped away her tears, my sweet little daughter looked up at me with her new toothless grin and exclaimed: “This means the Tooth Fairy is coming tonight! I’m gonna be rich!” Well, maybe not exactly rich. I’m still in grad school, so despite the fact that inflation has driven up the price of a tooth to nearly four dollars, in my house the Tooth Fairy only pays a measly buck.

Let’s Talk About Gene Therapy

By Elizabeth Reis

It is exciting to read about promising new gene therapies that might make living with various disabilities easier or even render them extinct. Researchers at University of Massachusetts Medical School are working on a way to “turn off” the extra chromosome found in people with Down syndrome. If the gene therapy works as they hope, turning off the chromosome would mitigate some of the effects of Down’s. So far this possibility has only been glimmered in a laboratory dish, but ultimately the goal would be to turn off the extra chromosome prenatally, so that the brain would form without developmental and intellectual encumbrances.