The Blue Skinned Fugate Family
In the early 1800s in Kentucky, USA, Martin Fugate and Elizabeth Smith got married and settled down to raise a family. If you saw a family photograph, you’d be forgiven for thinking that there was something wrong with the camera, as four of their seven childrens’ faces were a cobalt blue colour. They weren’t wearing makeup, and they sure weren’t struggling to breathe the fresh mountain air where they lived -- their skin was just naturally blue.
By an incredible coincidence, both Fugate and Smith carried a rare regressive gene called methemoglobinemia (Met-H), which had lain dormant in their systems, but emerged in their children. Their skin colour aside, the Fugate family were as healthy as normal, and were accepted in their isolated, rural community in the Appalachian Mountains.
But the line of “The Blue People of Kentucky” didn’t end there. Due to their isolated location, where there were no roads or rail systems, some of the Fugate family began to intermarry and inbreed with cousins, and so the recessive gene emerged in their children in turn.
Come the 1960s however, well over 100 years after the first blue Fugates had been born, some began to rebel against their skin, as it had become a sign of the family’s in-breeding. Two of them went in search of a cure, and encountered a hematologist by the name of Madison Cawein. He ascertained that they had a hereditary blood disorder that resulted in too much methemoglobin (a blue version of hemoglobin, the protein that makes our blood red). Whereas most caucasian people are slightly pink in skin colour, those with excessive methemoglobin are slightly blue. And Dr. Cawein was able to help the Fugates too. Ironically he prescribed them pills of blue dye, which encouraged their bodies to turn the methemoglobin into red hemoglobin. Within minutes, their skin shade was “normal”. They did still carry the regressive gene however, and it’s cropped up a few times since. In 1975, a child called Benjamin Stacy was born with dark blue skin. His location? Kentucky. As it turns out, Benjamin was descended from the Blue Fugates. His skin lightened back to white by the age of seven though, and by all accounts, there are no visibly “Blue People of Kentucky”. However, it’s said that descendants of the Fugate family still sometimes show their blue hue when cold or angry!
Why did some of the Fugates have blue skin?
What does it mean to “inbreed”?
How were the Fugates “cured” of their blue skin?
Which of the following statements is true?
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