Part Five:

Abstract

NANCY SABIN WEXLER radiates openness, integrity, and commitment; she is a doer with a big heart. Her passion for the science of genetics is grounded in personal experience. Her mother, Leonore Sabin Wexler, died of Huntington's disease, as did her uncles Jesse, Seymour, and Paul, and their father, Abraham Sabin (Nancy's maternal grandfather). As Alzheimer's disease did in the Ross family, Huntington's disease cut a wide swath through the Wexler family. Nancy, her sister, Alice, and her father, Milton, watched as Leonore, a woman of formidable intellect, developed uncontrollable movements and deteriorated mentally.