FB 60. It may seem that nothing is happening with JKD at the moment. As always this is far from the truth. In part this has been due to my change in email address which caused a number of reports on new cases temporarily to go astray. My first news , therefore, is that this has been rectified and all the new pedigrees are now up on the boxerjkd.com website, with few more yet to come in. They include JKD cases from countries other than the UK and the whole makes informative reading. The same pattern of inheritance is becoming evident everywhere.
Disappointingly, critical personal comments on the boxerjkd group written by Tim Hutchings have appeared in the British canine newspaper, Our Dogs. The seriousness of the JKD situation is also dismissed. Responding to this has taken up some time but the whole story to date can be viewed in the boxerjkd.com blog. It all makes for sad reading.
It seems that much of the problem is due a lack of understanding of the genetics of the disease and full appreciation of the pedigree evidence. Therefore boxerjkd.com is now trying to alleviate this by annotating the pedigrees to provide more key information; this is based on the published evidence. However, as not all pedigrees have been reported to us, notably those held by the Breed Council health committee, the annotations are incomplete. The annotated pedigrees can now be viewed on the boxerjkd website.
It should also be noted that the Norway list is incomplete. The Norwegian Boxer Club has decided that it wants to publish its own pedigrees, although with our annotation system. This may be appropriate and would save us much work. We are therefore closing our Norway list and replacing it with a link to the Norwegian one. Little difference will be noted in practice.
Of far greater importance however are the new research findings also reported in the boxerjkd blog. These comprise the incredible news from Professor Amos that he is confident that he has identified the chromosome on which the gene for JKD lies. Finding the chromosomal location of the gene is a major milestone in identifying the gene itself. More detail is given in the blog.
Disappointingly, critical personal comments on the boxerjkd group written by Tim Hutchings have appeared in the British canine newspaper, Our Dogs. The seriousness of the JKD situation is also dismissed. Responding to this has taken up some time but the whole story to date can be viewed in the boxerjkd.com blog. It all makes for sad reading.
It seems that much of the problem is due a lack of understanding of the genetics of the disease and full appreciation of the pedigree evidence. Therefore boxerjkd.com is now trying to alleviate this by annotating the pedigrees to provide more key information; this is based on the published evidence. However, as not all pedigrees have been reported to us, notably those held by the Breed Council health committee, the annotations are incomplete. The annotated pedigrees can now be viewed on the boxerjkd website.
It should also be noted that the Norway list is incomplete. The Norwegian Boxer Club has decided that it wants to publish its own pedigrees, although with our annotation system. This may be appropriate and would save us much work. We are therefore closing our Norway list and replacing it with a link to the Norwegian one. Little difference will be noted in practice.
Of far greater importance however are the new research findings also reported in the boxerjkd blog. These comprise the incredible news from Professor Amos that he is confident that he has identified the chromosome on which the gene for JKD lies. Finding the chromosomal location of the gene is a major milestone in identifying the gene itself. More detail is given in the blog.