volunteers from the Israelis, and,
tired of spending his days "picking
peaches with other Americans," he
went to Safad to visit a family friend.
While there, he ended up working in
the department of obstetrics and
gynecology of the local government
hospital, doing genetic research.
Dr. Evans met his wife of 10 years
at the University of Chicago, where

"The most important
thing every couple
should understand is that
pregnancy is a
crapshoot, and not
everyone is guaranteed a
healthy, happy baby."

Dr. Mark Evans

He has his critics, and his successes.

genetic technology for pre-conceptual
sex selection.
"Next, someone will decide they
want a basketball player with blue
eyes;' he said. "It's a touchstone for
so many bad possibilities."
Dr. Evans believes all women over
the age of 30 should have some kind
of prenatal testing, such as chorionic
villus sampling (CVS) or
amniocentesis.
"If you only test women over 35, you
only pick up 20 percent of the abnor-

malities," he said. "The odds are
everything will be fine, but if you're
wrong, which way do you want to be
wrong?
"The most important thing every
couple should understand is that
pregnancy is a crapshoot, and not
everyone is guaranteed a healthy,
happy baby;' said Dr. Evans.
Dr. Evans' own gene pool does not
include a predisposition to practicing
medicine. "I come from a long line of
carpenters," he quips, referring to his

father and brother who are in the
building business in Florida. •
Dr. Evans grew up in Brooklyn,
N.Y., where he was raised as a Reform
Jew. He graduated magna cum laude
from Tufts University in Massachu-
setts. Before starting medical school
at State University of New York, he
went to work on a kibbutz outside of
Jerusalem, "just to do something
totally different."
The adventure lasted four days. His
kibbutz separated the American

he was a resident and she was an ad-
ministrator in the medical school.
They live in West Bloomfield with
their two daughters and one of Mrs.
Evans' two teen-age sons from a
previous marriage. The family
belongs to Temple Israel.
Dr. Evans foresees an increase in
the number of disorders that can be
detected and prevented through new
techniques such as gene therapy. This
involves replacing a defective gene
during the pre-embryo stage, giving
the fetus the ability to make the pro-
duct it was previously missing,
thereby curing itself. This technology
has great potential for curing such
hereditary diseases as sickle cell and
Tay-Sachs.
As far as his personal future goes,
Dr. Evans has no specific plans.
"Right now, I'm happy here," he said.
"My greatest accomplishment is
developing new techniques that allow
women, who would otherwise not go
home with happy, healthy babies, to
do so."

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

55

