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Genetic Linkage

The Curious Genetics of Werewolves

The "wolf boy" brothers have Ambras syndrome, an autosomal dominant condition that may have inspired the werewolf legend (Gary Moore photo).
Growing up in the 1960s, I collected monster cards: The 60-foot-man and the 50-foot woman; body doubles gestating in giant seed pods; unseen Martians that sucked people into sand pits and returned them devoid of emotion, with telltale marks on the back of the neck. One card featured a very young Michael Landon in “I Was a Teenage Werewolf.”

Forgive my lapse in political correctness, but I recalled those cards when I saw the word “hypertrichosis” in a recent paper in PLOS Genetics because, unfortunately, the condition is also known historically as “werewolf syndrome.” Read More 
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