DNA tests grow more vital in hereditary breast cancer treatments. They also raise unanswerable questions.
By Sarah Elizabeth Richards,
Washington Post
| 03. 15. 2020
When Lisa DeAngelico found out she had Stage 4 breast cancer two years ago at age 47, she says one of the hardest parts about her diagnosis was telling her mother. That’s because her mother had already lost her sister and niece to the disease. They had hoped DeAngelico would be spared from the family curse.
So when DeAngelico’s doctor asked her whether she wanted to undergo DNA testing to better understand her family genetics, she agreed to offer a blood sample and meet with a genetic counselor.
“I hoped that if it did tell me I had a gene, I could tell others in my family that they should get tested early,” says DeAngelico, a hospital administrative coordinator in East Boston.
Surgeons say all breast cancer patients should be offered genetic testing
Yet the results revealed more than a family connection. When her doctor learned that DeAngelico had a mutation in the BRCA2 gene, he explained she also had a risk of ovarian cancer and advised her to have her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed to prevent the cancer...
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Following a long-standing CGS tradition, we present a selection of our favorite Biopolitical Times posts of the past year.
In 2025, we published up to four posts every month, written by 12 authors (staff, consultants and allies), some in collaboration and one simply credited to CGS.
These titles are presented in chronological order, except for three In Memoriam notices, which follow. Many more posts that are worth your time can be found in the archive. Scroll down and “VIEW...
