From: "andrew cooke" <andrew@...>
Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2006 07:50:09 -0300 (CLST)
http://metatalk.metafilter.com/mefi/13333 http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/45654#1066483 The following text was deleted: The wonderful photo of the grinning Cruise illustrates beautifully the reason why I think this report might not be true, or at the very least, might be premature. Check out his teeth. That's right, Cruise has only three incisors - he was born with a fused, midline incisor. He's had dental work, including reshaping and adult braces, to minimize the abnormal appearance of this tooth - in early photos you'll find he almost never smiles, and when he does you can see that the middle incisor is freakishly wide. Midline incisor can be a forme fruste of holoprosencephaly, a syndrome which in its more severe manifestions can lead to cyclopia, fusion of the frontal lobes, a primitive proboscis instead of a nose (located above the fusion eyeball), and other grisly abnormalities. [Caution: disturbing medical photographs.] The babies are usually aborted or stillborn, which if you recall was the fate of Nicole's first couple of preganancies (after the first one, she clammed up about it.) Further evidence of this heritable trait comes from Cruise's history; his biological father was mildly retarded and beat him severely as a child. Mild retardation, with or without violent behaviors, can also be part of an incomplete holoprosencephaly syndrome. Amusingly, one of the genes found to be mutated in holoprosencephaly is called sonic hedgehog. It is a human analog of a gene first described in Drosophila fruit flies; embryos with the gene knocked out develop a spiky appearance and are non-viable. More than one gene knockout produced this 'hedgehog' appearance; some wag dubbed this member of the hedgehog family "sonic." In any event, I suspect Cruise might carry one or even a pair of these holoprosencephaly genes, and if so, this pregnancy might not make it. I hope I'm wrong, though; no matter how you feel about Tom Cruise, genetic diseases really suck. Andrew
Have You Nothing Better To Do?
From: "andrew cooke" <andrew@...>
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:10:56 -0400 (CLT)
I noted down this information because I was annoyed by the censorship, not because I give a damn about Tom Cruise. Years later I am amazed at the number of hits this page gets. And I am starting to see why Tom Cruise is so intolerant. Don't you fuckwits have anything better to do than read about other people's private lives? Andrew
Re: Tom Cruise, Holoprosencephaly
From: "andrew cooke" <andrew@...>
Date: Sat, 6 Sep 2008 19:00:11 -0400 (CLT)
---------------------------- Original Message ---------------------------- Subject: Re: Tom Cruise, Holoprosencephaly From: "Jim Sasaki" <sasaki@...> Date: Sat, September 6, 2008 4:41 pm -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, as for me, I read the article because I was interested in finding about holoprosencephaly. The Tom Cruise part? Couldn't care less. In fact, I didn't even see "Tom Cruise" when I skimmed the subject line. An experiment would be to change the subject line of the article to just "Holoprosencephaly" and see if the hit rate changes. Or better yet, make two links, one titled "Tom Cruise" and one titled "Holoprosencephaly" and see if their hit rates differ.