Reader Responses to Resistance Fighters

I and veritably everyone on this planet possesses a G6pd enzyme (“Resistance Fighters,” March/April). To a greater degree, people of sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and the Middle East are known to possess it in its most deficient form and are said to have a G6pd enzyme deficiency. I was driven to research this genetic predisposition when I was kept from travel on behalf of the Peace Corps. My travel to Kenya, to join my husband who was serving as the District Director of Mombasa, would have proven fatal. To me. Not to my husband. Not to my toddler daughter. Just to me.

As I researched more, during a time when the WWW was in its infancy, I found that my genetic predisposition could make sulfa and its derivatives—antibiotics, in particular—harmful to both my physical and mental well-being. Therefore, it stands to reason that antibiotics that are particularly harmful to folk of my genetic makeup were over for me a long time ago. 

After many years of talking and sharing and discovery and research, I am pleased to announce that a Minnesota State Representative named Rena Moran heard the urgency of my appeal and supported me in the writing of the first bill to encourage 1) neonatal screening for G6pd enzyme deficiency, 2) research and development incentive towards product development, 3) mindful environmental practice in its regard, and 4) culturally-relevant, art-based literacy programming.