((Excerpt))
KETTERING — A Wright State University professor is seeking the genetic roots of some of humankind’s most common birth defects — cleft lips and palates — among a remote people in Nepal’s Himalayan mountains.
Some 40 miles from the base camp for Mount Everest climbing expeditions, Richard Sherwood is collecting impressions of the teeth of the remote Jirel people. He’s no dentist; the work is part of research into the root causes of craniofacial deformities.