Adele Schneider, director of clinical genetics at Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia and principal investigator of the current research, says the study came together after she saw three families of Irish descent who all had children with Tay-Sachs in the past few years.

WSJ: New Study Looks at Irish Risk for Tay-Sachs Disease

This period of conflict may last for decades, particularly if the new paradigm comes, not from some of the existing leaders of the current scientific establishment but rather from some unexpected and peripheral source, e.g. the dramatically different theory of genetics coming from Gregor Mendel in Moravia or a revolutionary theory of stomach ulcers from Barry Marshall in Perth, Australia.

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