The controversial recommendation by the researcher who discovered the BRCA1 gene to screen all woman over age 30 for genetic mutations linked to breast cancer is another example of bringing a screening tool that is useful in high risk populations to the general population without evidence of benefit for doing so – especially since the study this recommendation is based on was in Ashkenazi Jewish women in Israel, who we already know to have a much higher rate of BRCA mutations than the general population (about 1 in 40 Ashkenazi women carry a BRCA mutation compared to 1 in 600 or 800 for the general population). For women with BRCA mutations, knowing about their increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer can be incredibly important. But BRCA mutations only account for 5-10% of all breast cancers. Time and again, we see that the more we seek answers to the breast cancer epidemic in individual women’s bodies, the less we will focus on the societal factors outside our individual control that are driving the breast cancer epidemic.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 19:04:50 +0000
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