The lack of fingerprints can cause vexing social problems, which are magnified because few people have heard of the condition.

Cheryl Maynard of Fairfax, Virginia, is part of the fifth generation of her family to have inherited DPR from her mother’s side.

Maynard has personally experienced many fingerprint-related snafus, often related to employment.

She works as a flight attendant and noted that a standard background check by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, which took about 2 weeks for most of her peers, took 14 weeks in her case.

“I applied for work at a jail facility, and they were naturally fingerprinting people who were going to be employees,” she said.

“I kept hearing, Of course you have fingerprints. And five or six different technicians were telling one another, You’re doing this wrong, let me do this. I have to tell them I was born without them.”

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