The Breast Cancer Gene

With breast cancer and many other hormonal cancers on the rise, people need to be getting routinely tested. The BRCA mutation can be identified through testing which will yield a positive or negative result. This is extremely important for women and men, who have a family history of breast cancer. Ashkenazi Jews in particular are at increased risk with studies showing, one out of every 40 individuals have a mutation in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene. This is compared to one out of every 800 members of the general population, according to the Centers for Disease Control. 

"I did not know I was a carrier because I do not fall within testing parameters. Most insurance companies cover testing specifically for Ashkenazi Jewish women only once we present with breast cancer. Before that doomed moment, testing is only for women who have a family history of BRCA or who have had breast cancer at a young age, or who have close relatives with the disease."
According to Force, an advocacy group concerned with hereditary breast and ovarian cancers, an estimated 90 percent of BRCA carriers do not know that they are. That means untold thousands of people in the United States don’t realize they are likely to get a bad case of breast cancer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/opinion/sunday/elizabeth-wurtzel-the-breast-cancer-gene-and-me.html

I think it is very unfortunate that women and men are not being tested routinely for these cancers especially in populations at high risk (like Ashkenazi Jewish women). This needs to be changed in all areas of health care for testing of high risk cancers.  

http://annonc.oxfordjournals.org/content/15/suppl_1/i7.full.pdf- another link