Hemopheliacs?

Question

Has anyone heard of the myth that says all hemopheliacs can be traced back to the Tsars of Russia (The Romanovs)? If so, is this true and can it be proven? Is this in a book somewhere?

Answer 1

Hemophilia has existed as a disease for thousands of years. It appeared in the royal families of Europe as the result of Queen Victoria's daughters marrying into nearly all the royal houses of that time.

There was no history of the disease in either Queen Victoria's or Prince Albert's family. Queen Victoria had a hemophiliac son, Prince Leopold, who died as a young man. So the gene must have spontaneously mutated in her. Though only men have the disease, woman are the carriers of the gene.

Victoria's daughters and granddaughters married into the German, Russian and Spanish royal families, taking the gene with them. Though it was known as the "royal disease", no one understood the genetics behind it at that time.

Tsarina Alexandra, the mother of the hemophiliac Tsarevich Alexis, was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. She knew that she was responsible for the child's illness, and this was the great tragedy of her life, leading her to seek a cure from Rasputin, and the subsequent downfall of the Romanovs.

Answer 2

Hemophilia earned the nickname the "Royal Disease" because England's Queen Victoria's passed it on to the German, Spanish, and Russian royal houses when her daughters married into them. The first royal to suffer hemophilia was Victoria's eighth child, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany. Of course, Alexei, the son of the last Czar of Russia, Nicholas II, suffered from severe hemophilia.

Evidence of the first recorded instances of hemophilia are found in the Talmud, which exempts male infants from circumcision if two brothers have already died from the practice.

Answer 3

This is old news. Medication intended to treat hemophilia was the first to prove a non-sexual vector for HIV transmission. The video itself is from the mid 80's. It's possible that the Pointy Haired Bosses who sold the inadvertently tainted drugs overseas were simply too stupid to realize what they were doing. This isn't a recent "terrorist act" but a case of negligence on the part of people back when AIDS was not understood as well as it is today.

Answer 4

i'm not sure but i know hemophilia was a huge problem with royalty because it's genetic and they were so "uh we must be royal" that it just kept being passed on.