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From: Dennis Drayna
Date: 13 Oct 2005
Time: 11:55:15 -0500
Remote Name: 165.112.46.123
Dear Robert, Actually females are probably not less likely to develop stuttering. Evidence seems to indicate that both males and females develop stuttering at similar rates in young childhood, but females appear to recover more frequently. In that sense, females are more likely to get an "exemption" from the (presumaby) dominant factor at work in genetic cases. Dominant or recessive is a property of a particular mutation, and is not specific to a particular family. I'm wondering whether you may be asking if a genetic effect can be "diluted out" over subsequent generations. The answer is somewhat technical, but roughly speaking, dominant mutations do not get "diluted out" over generations, although sometimes by the random nature of the laws of inheritance, none of the offspring of an affected person inherit the gene. In such a case, subsequent generations of the family are then free of the disorder. This assumes, of course, that subsequent generations don't pick up a "stuttering gene" from someone who marries into the family.