Jerome lejeune down syndrome

French pediatrician and geneticist (1926–1994)

Jérôme Jean Louis Marie Lejeune (French pronunciation:[ʒeʁomʒɑ̃lwimaʁiləʒœn]; 13 June 1926 – 3 April 1994) was a French pediatrician and geneticist, best known for his work on the link of diseases to chromosome abnormalities, most especially the link between Down Syndrome and trisomy-21 and cri du chat syndrome, amongst several others, and for his subsequent strong opposition to the improper and immoral use of amniocentesisprenatal testing for eugenic purposes through selective and elective abortion.^[4] He is venerated in the Catholic Church, having been declared Venerable by Pope Francis on 21 January 2021.^[5]

Career

Discovering trisomy 21

In 1958, while working in Raymond Turpin’s laboratory with Marthe Gautier, Jérôme Lejeune reported that he had discovered that Down syndrome was caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21.

According to Lejeune's laboratory notebooks, he made the o