Society and culture
In 1966 in the US and Canada, Jerry Lewis and the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) began the annual Labor Day telecast The Jerry Lewis Telethon, significant in raising awareness of muscular dystrophy in North America. Disability rights advocates, however, have criticized the telethon for portraying those living with the disease as deserving pity rather than respect.On December 18, 2001, the MD CARE Act was signed into law in the US; it amends the Public Health Service Act to provide research for the various muscular dystrophies. This law also established the Muscular Dystrophy Coordinating Committee to help focus research efforts through a coherent research strategy. See also
References
Further reading
De Los Angeles Beytía, Maria; Vry, Julia; Kirschner, Janbernd (2012). "Drug treatment of Duchenne musculardystrophy: available evidence and perspectives". Acta Myologica. 31 (1): 4–8. PMC 3440798. PMID 22655510. Bertini, Enrico; DAmico, Adele; Gualandi, Francesca; Petrini, Stefania (December 2011). "Congenital Muscular Dystrophies: A Brief Review". Seminars in Pediatric Neurology. 18 (4): 277–288. doi:10.1016/j.spen.2011.10.010. PMC 3332154. PMID 22172424. External links

Muscular dystrophies at Curlie
However a finding such as 2,3-toe syndactyly raises the index of suspicion for Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome.Most open source projects that perform phenotype-driven disease or gene prioritization work with the terminology of the Human Phenotype Ontology. This controlled vocabulary can be used to describe the clinical features of a patient and is suitable for machine learning approaches. Publicly accessible databases that labs use to deposit their diagnostic findings, such as ClinVar, can be used to build knowledge graphs to explore the clinical feature space.Dysmorphic features are invariably present from birth, although some are not immediately apparent upon visual inspection. They can be divided into groups based on their origin, including malformations (abnormal development), disruptions (damage to previously normal tissue), deformations (damage caused by an outside physical force) and dysplasias (abnormal growth or organization within a tissue). Dysmorphology
Dysmorphology is the discipline of using dysmorphic features in the diagnostic workup and delineation of syndromic disorders. In the recent years advances in computer vision have also resulted in several deep learning approaches that assist geneticists in the study of the facial gestalt. == References ==