In the words of Lee Corso... Not so fast, my friend!

Turns out that there was a real flaw to our logic.

As we later learned from my pulmonologist, the genetic structure of A1AT was not the simple dominant-recessive relationship that we all recall. It is instead, what is referred to as a Co-Dominant gene.

What does that mean? Well, let's take the example of brown eyes or blue eyes. If the genetics were a simple dominant-recessive relationship, and A is brown eyes (dominant) and B is blue eyes (recessive), then two parents, one with AA, and one with BB, will each contribute one allele, leaving their offspring to be AB. Since the A is the dominant allele, the offsprings eyes will be brown. They will be a carrier of the B allele, meaning that the offspring's children, or further down the family tree, still have a chance to inherit the two recessive alleles necessary to have blue eyes (BB).

On the other hand, A1AT is Co-dominant. That means that BOTH alleles contribute to the makeup of the offspring. It isn't necessarily a 50-50 split (sometimes 60-40, sometimes 40-60, etc...) but a combination of the two regardless. Hence, using our example, the AB offspring would have some combination of the blue and brown color in their eyes.