Wonder_Wood

Thank you, everyone. Now that I think about it, it would be silly to let just the possibility of such a small issue get in the way of producing future children for this world. I'm pretty fortunate, genetically speaking, and I have a lot of other great traits to offer my future kids. Maybe it was just the concept of having a "stain" on what is otherwise a pretty good genetic setup that got to me. Evidently, there's probably some psychological issues in there too Again, thank you guys. You put things into perspective for me.

It's not serious at all. I still don't want my children to have it though. I'm defective, and I would hate to see my children come out defective too. I'd feel so guilty and I don't think I'd ever be able to get over that.

I would imagine that it could be advantageous if it were "done right." That is, the fingers were all anatomically correct and functional without getting in the way of each other. In my case, however, not at all. I just had a weird fleshy sac hanging off of my thumb.

First, some background info: I was born with pre-axial polydactyly. Not a severe case, but basically I had a growth hanging off of my left thumb when I was born. It was removed very soon after, and so I've had a charismatically crooked thumb throughout my 20 years of existence, which is going to be "fixed" surgically in about a month. It has never given me much trouble. At least none worth mentioning. From what I've gathered, I am the only person in my family to ever have been born with an extra digit, at least as far as I know, so it is not a family trait that's been passed down to me. My two siblings do not have it. Neither do my parents, or my grandparents. Just lucky ol' me. So it seems to have been a random occurrence. It was not accompanied with any other physical conditions or deformities. It's just a jacked up thumb. Now I understand that polydactyly by itself is a dominant trait when genetic, but I've also heard that it is not always genetic, and in fact there is no explanation for it most of the time. Okay, so onto the question: given the previous information on my polydactyly, what do you educated folks think are the chances that I will pass it onto my children? I don't know if I'd be willing to pass on this trait to a child or multiple children if it is in fact a genetic mutation that I possess. And, quite frankly, it is pretty disheartening to know that I may possibly be the carrier of a "bad gene," because I really wanted to have a lot of kids and it kind of feels shitty to be a defective human.