The nearest bus stop is over there!” Rolf Brederlow can’t get that sentence out of his head. He repeats it over and over once more. These are the first words that Bobby, as everyone calls him, speaks into a camera. And it is the beginning of a special acting career. In 1999 he took on his first major role in the four-part series »Love and Other Catastrophes«. In the same year he was awarded the Bambi for this. In the autobiographical film »Bobby« he plays himself: a man with Down syndrome.
Human DNA, the blueprint of our body, is divided into 23 pairs of chromosomes in the cell nucleus. Each pair contains half of the mother’s and half of the father’s genome. But in people like Bobby, one of the parents passed on two copies of the 21st chromosome. There are therefore three instead of two copies of it in their cells, one also speaks of a trisomy 21. This most common of all chromosomal anomalies affects one in 1000 babies born in Europe. It would be twice as many if every second pregnancy were not terminated in the presence of trisomy 21. According to an estimate by the Dutch Down Syndrome Foundation from 2021, almost half a million people with Down syndrome live in Europe, more than 50,000 of them in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
The additional genetic material changes the development of the brain and body. Those affected are usually smaller than others, have a round face with soft features, slanted eyes and a characteristic eyelid crease. In addition, their level of cognitive performance is lower, although there are large differences. They often suffer from congenital heart defects and have weaker immune protection. Thanks to medical advances, such as heart surgery, people with Down syndrome now live to be 60 years old on average. About 50 years ago, life expectancy was less than ten years.
