October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month!

This month advocates from around the world join together to spread awareness, and to encourage inclusion of individuals living with Down syndrome in our communities. It is a month to celebrate these special people's abilities and accomplishments, but also to highlighting their needs, and their future potential gradually being unlocked by advances in medical research.

Parents and other advocates know that in trying to raise awareness about Down syndrome, one of the greatest challenges is in trying to overcome misperceptions. Some have a sugar-coated perception of individuals with Down syndrome and consider them “perfectly adorable angels." But that attitude is countered on the other side by another, and far more dangerous misperception: that Down syndrome is a devastating disability that brings tremendous hardship and suffering to the individual and their family. In reality, both are wrong. These stereotypes stand in the way of progress toward improving lives, giving appropriate human respect, and securing a meaningful place for children and adults with Down syndrome in our communities.

The real truth that parents intimately know is the fierce love they have for their child with Down syndrome. Perceptions medical professionals often have and pass on to patients following a prenatal test are perceptions removed from the human reality. They are perceptions formed only by looking at chromosomes, and not the very positive future the person to whom those chromosomes belong will have. Parents can't fall in love with a picture of chromosomes or the result of a non-invasive prenatal screening test. They must be encouraged to look past all of that to the human reality that grows in the mother's womb.

"We need to be clear: The quality of a civilization can be measured by the respect it has for its weakest members. There is no other criterion." -Jerome Lejeune

This quote of Dr. Jerome Lejeune is the only true metric for success used by the Jerome Lejeune Foundation, and the sole motivator for all we do. To quote Dr. Suess, "A person's a person no matter how small", and a human person is of infinite value and worthy of profound respect regardless of their disability or their place in the continuum of human development.

As we celebrate Down Syndrome Awareness Month, we are so grateful to our friends and benefactors who make it possible for us to carry on the legacy of Dr. Jerome Lejeune by funding and conducting the highest level of cutting-edge research, by improving medical care, and by speaking out on behalf of those whose lives we strive to improve each day.