There is a lot of prejudice around Down syndrome. Old prejudice said all individuals with Down syndrome are noneducatable institution-inmates. Then they were said to be jolly and musically talented, but still uneducatable.
Today we know individuals with Down syndrome are far more talented than we thought, talents that may bloom if well nourished. But most important: Fellow citizens who happens to have Down syndrome are firsthand Katarina, Harald, Uffe and Linnea, individuals as different from one another as are persons without disabilities. Who each individual is and what each individual accomplishes depends on the combination of heritage and environment.
Down syndrome does always mean a lowered intellectual capacity, but while some adult individuals manage quite well with just some support others are facing considerable difficulties and need assistance with most things in their daily life.
Some individuals with Down syndrome are facing different complications, like heart-defects, epilepsy or autism, which, of course, means they have to follow a toughter path than individuals that does not face such problems.
Over 95 percent of persons with Down syndrome has a full Trisomy 21, meaning all their cells contain three instead of two copies of chromosome no 21, and this diversion from the normal path is caused by pure coincidence.
Very seldom one of the parents has a "balanced translocation" meaning one of the chromosomes 21 are stuck to another chromosome, thus increasing risk that the child inherits two chromosomes 21 from this parent, providing the child a total of three chromosomes no 21.
There is a lot of information on Down syndrome available on the Internet. Down syndrome sites on the internet has one of the most complete collections of links to all kinds of sites concerning Down syndrome.
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