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What Are the Risks? What Are the Choices?

Mary-Claire King, PhD; Sarah Rowell, MPH; Susan M. Love, MD

JAMA. 1993;269(15):1975-1980.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

IT IS now clear that susceptibility to breast and ovarian cancer is inherited in some families. Between 5% and 10% of breast cancer^1,2 and ovarian cancer³ can be attributed to inheritance of a gene conferring high risk, followed by genetic changes specific to the target epithelial cells of the breast or ovary. For decades, there has been no doubt that cancer is genetic, in the sense that transformation of a normal cell to invasive and malignant growth is due to changes in the DNA. But most cancer is genetic only at the level of the transformed cell, not in the germline cells of patients. Consequently, most cancer is not inherited in families. Not all that is genetic is inherited.

Meanwhile, it has been observed for centuries that breast cancer clusters in families.⁴ Of course, given the very high incidence of breast cancer in our times, there are . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology and the School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley (Dr King and Ms Rowell); and the Breast Center and the Department of Surgery, Center for Health Sciences, UCLA, Los Angeles, Calif (Dr Love).

Footnotes
Reprint requests to 140 Warren Hall, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720 (Dr King).

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