McKusick classification

McKusick classification

A popular name for the classification of human disease delineated by Victor McKusick (1921–2008), Osler Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins medical school and “Linnaeus” of human genetics, who single-handedly organised the catalogue of congenital disease. His central work, the Mendelian Inheritance in Man (MIM, and the online version OMIM), forms the basis for international communication in genetic disease; each condition found in the work has an assigned MIM number, often based on the pattern of inheritance, as in autosomal recessive, autosomal dominant or linked to the X chromosome.