Yes, a young boy was forced from school for carrying cystic fibrosis alleles

Update II: This comment sums up the pertinent issues.

Update: Please see comments below. This may be an infectious disease story, and not a genetic one.

When a reader sent me an email about the story, I assumed it was a rather sophisticated hoax. The short of it is that an 11 year old boy, Colman Chadam, has been pulled out of his school in Palo Alto because he carries alleles for cystic fibrosis, though he is asymptomatic (i.e., he has never manifested any symptoms of c.f.) administrators are worried that he might pose a risk to some students who do show progression of c.f. (bacterial infections can spread from child to child). As you probably know about 1 out of 30 people of European descent is a carrier for one of the many thousands of mutant variants for cystic fibrosis. The details of Colman Chadam’s results are not totally clear. Is he just a carrier? Or does he have two copies of cystic fibrosis, but somehow they differ enough that they can functionally complement each other?

We don’t know. But we do know that the lawyer from the school, Lenore Silverman, has stated that “The district is not willing to risk a potentially life-threatening illness among kids.” The risk here is non-existent. Not to be creepy, but does the school require that people with various venereal diseases also avoid the premises? With the small, but non-trivial, frequency of sexual abuse at school they too post a illness risk to the kids. In fact, more than Colman Chadam.

You can read everything at The San Francisco Chronicle. Perhaps you want to contact some of the staff at Jordan Middle School in Palo Alto. These people should be ashamed of themselves. I know we live in a litigious society, and being in education isn’t the easiest job, but we deserve better than this!