Unabomber target Charles Epstein dies

Dr. Charles Epstein, a University of California, San Francisco medical geneticist who studied Down syndrome and pioneered genetic counseling for families with affected children, but whose career was temporarily interrupted by a vicious 1993 attack by the notorious Unabomber, died Tuesday at his home in Tiburon, Calif. He was 77 and had been battling pancreatic cancer.

Epstein helped create a model genetics clinic, the first on the West Coast, and "helped establish and legitimize the profession of genetic counseling," Joann Boughman of the American Society of Human Genetics said last year when Epstein received the group's major leadership award.

But his career almost ended prematurely. In June 1993, Epstein opened an envelope that had come in the mail. The envelope exploded, destroying three of his fingers, breaking his arm and burning his hand, face and abdomen. The blast blew out kitchen windows and screens and ripped a table top off its legs.

Epstein later said that if the package had been pointed in a slightly different direction, the bomb would have killed him.

- Los Angeles Times