Because no doctor has ever been able to provide a formal diagnosis for Brooke’s condition, her condition has been labeled “Syndrome X.” Weighing just 16 (7 kilograms), she is estimated to have the mental capacity of a toddler.
Brooke has “no apparent abnormalities in her endocrine system, no gross chromosomal abnormalities, or any of the other disruptions known to occur in humans that can cause developmental issues,” said Dr. Eric Schadt, director of the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, reports the Daily Mail.
Her Baltimore-area family treats Brooke like any other child, insisting she does not need to be cured: “If somebody knocked on the door right now and said, ‘It’s a guaranteed pill. Give this to Brooke and she’ll be fixed,’ well, first I would say to him, ‘She’s not broken,'” her father Howard told Katie Couric on her daily live talk show.
