Feature: Peering into My Genome

December 4, 2014

(Science) – Several of the authors, among them Mary-Claire King of the University of Washington, Seattle, BRCA1’s discoverer, say all women regardless of family history should learn whether they carry dangerous mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2. Other experts are not yet convinced. Perhaps even more contentious is whom to screen for dozens of risk genes uncovered in the past decade, some only tenuously linked to cancer. I might have written a nuanced Science story laying out both sides of the debate. But when it came to my own health, 486 Israeli women with BRCA mutations, half without a family history but all highly vulnerable to cancer, was all I needed.