BRCAGenes — Bookmaking, Fortunetelling, and Medical Care

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Abstract
The world cheered the discovery of the BRCA1 cancer-susceptibility gene in 19941 and was chilled by its implications. A woman with a strong family history of breast or ovarian cancer, or both, who carries a germ-line mutation of BRCA1 faces roughly an 85 percent lifetime risk of breast cancer and a 60 percent risk of ovarian cancer.2 BRCA2 was then discovered,3 and together these two genes were said to explain most cases of familial breast cancer.The pressure for the immediate application of these discoveries to clinical care was overwhelming from the outset. The race to discover new genes was . . .