Generations of tears

Most cruel of all, doctors say that people with Huntington's retain their memories of who and what they were before. But it destroys the ability to reason, to communicate, to focus.

Researchers are convinced that if they could find an effective treatment or cure for Huntington's, it would help them understand a host of other illnesses, from depression and schizophrenia to Alzheimer's, Lou Gehrig's disease, Parkinson's disease and cancer.

But there is no effective treatment.

Dr. George Huntington documented the symptoms in 1872 but noted that similar descriptions could be traced back to the Middle Ages. It's unlikely he expected the disease he described as "tragic" to forever bear his name.

Huntington, who was a family practitioner like his father before him, based the conclusions he reached about what he called "hereditary chorea" on long observation of a family living near him on Long Island.

In a paper he presented to the Meigs and Mason Academy of Medicine at Middleport, Ohio, and published in The Medical and Surgical Reporter that year, he concluded that it passed from one generation to the next, wreaking havoc in lives. He also noted that it appeared in adulthood, created a "tendency to insanity" and if it bypassed someone, it didn't show up again in their direct descendants.

In the 127 years since, neither time nor technology has challenged those conclusions.

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Lael Kunz and John Askew had never heard of Huntington's disease when they fell in love their senior year at Jordan High School.

Life was an adventure ride, and they were anxious to climb aboard. They married on Aug. 25, 1961, just two months after they graduated.

It wasn't easy. John wanted to go to school, but money had to come first. He sat out what would have been his first year of college and they both worked so they could afford a tiny apartment on E Street in Salt Lake City.