Survival in Hereditary Breast and Colon Cancer

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Abstract
To the Editor.— Deleterious host responses to radiation and drugs are commonplace in genetic diseases, eg, radiation damage and death in patients with ataxia telangiectasia (AT) treated for lymphoma, radiation-induced tumors in inherited retinoblastoma, and the nevoid basal cell carcinoma syndrome, and in the case of drugs, endometrial carcinoma associated with stilbesterol in the treatment of gonadal dysgenesis. Nontherapeutic agents, when acting as carcinogens, are differentially metabolized as a result of primary genetic factors.1,2 Contrarily, anecdotal reports of extraordinary survival in patients with hereditary cancer suggest the possibility of host resistance to systemic cancer spread.3 Langlands et al4 have demonstrated increased mean survival in a series of breast cancer patients with a positive family history. In our registry of cancer-prone families, the five-year survival rate for 106 breast cancer patients (20 unrelated families) and 117 colon cancer patients (18 unrelated families) was compared with that of the

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