Girl With Rare Genetic Disorder Bullied Online
A 6-year-old who has been battling a rare genetic disease has been taunted and has even received death threats from random people on the Internet after her mother set up a Facebook page to raise awareness of the disease and the plight of children like her daughter.
Adalia Rose Williams suffers from a genetic disease called Progeria. Children with this disease age much faster than regular people and often have cataracts and arthritis before they hit their teenage years.
The disease is caused by a switch in only one nucleotide, one letter of genetic code on an important gene, out of billions in the entire genome. Children with Progeria rarely live past 13 but have above average intelligence.
After Adalia's mother put up the Facebook page with photos and videos of Adalia dancing and being a happy kid, despite her disease, there was an outpouring of support and now the page has almost six million Likes.
But with this torrent of love came those who were spiteful and made terrible comments about the girls physical appearance and soon other Facebook pages popped up making fun of the child and eventually people spread a rumor that the child had died. Her mother responded to such rumors by saying "She is healthy and happily sleeping in her bed having sweet dreams."
There is no cure for Progeria, but there is a lot of research and fundraising going on. Many new drugs are being tested to prevent the disease from progressing or possibly reverse the effects. The disease is almost never passed from parents to children and results from a single nucleotide mutation during embryonic growth.
More information can be found on Adalia's Website and more information about Progeria can be found at the Progeria Research Foundation website.