Field of Genes

With Shank unable or unwilling to write about the 2019 Red Sox, we get the occasional column designed to make him not look like a relentlessly negative asshole.

For Rich and Caitlin Hill, the decision to launch the “Field of Genes” campaign with a $575,000 donation to support research on rare and undiagnosed genetic diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children stems from the waves of shock and confusion that confronted them five years ago.

When Brooks Hill was born at MGH on Dec. 26, 2013, Caitlin immediately knew that something was wrong. The boy’s mother, a registered nurse, recognized a “delicate energy” in the delivery room.

Brooks didn’t cry without stimulation. He had cortical thumbs folded into his hands and contracted legs and arms. Though the birth had been induced a few weeks before Brooks’s due date because he was undersized, Caitlin heard the doctors whisper that the placenta was the size that would be found had her son reached full term.