Moni, just because someone has or doesn't have "the gene" for a disorder doesn't mean they will definitely have the disease or completely avoid having the disease.

helpful link from the National Institutes of Health

I tend to still believe breast cancer is genetic somehow. My Mom's sister had breast cancer, my sister and I both had breast cancer. So much we don't know.

Most woman who develop breast cancer do not have a family member with the disease. You are at greater risk if you have a relative with cancer but those people are actually in the minority.

I saw a segment on those women on Good Morning America today - how sad for those sisters.

They may have all shared an environmental hazard that led to cancer.

I think it could be hereditary, environmental or a mutation. Did they just look at the maternal side of the family? Or did they include dad's too?

Thinking out loud here. I don't know anything about this family. I wonder if the combination of mom and dad's genes triggered something. Brothers and sisters and first cousins (I think) are prohibited from marrying because of the increased chance for diseases. If you marry and have children within a community. Chances are that you are still marrying a relative which would also possibly increase your chances for a disease that didn't show up previously.

I agree that it could be a yet discovered gene and/or an environmental factor to which they were exposed. It does sound hereditary? But still... there are no guarantees that we will understand how this happened. Even if we understood which gene they had in common and if passed from maternal or paternal side.

One thing I do wonder, did the show explain if any other family members had ANY other kinds of cancer. That is nagging me. An excerpt from the link (AHA's family cancer syndromes):

"Having the same type of cancer in many relatives is more concerning than if it is several different kinds of cancer. Still, in some family cancer syndromes, a few types of cancer seem to go together. For example, breast cancer and ovarian cancer run together in families with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer syndrome (HBOC). Colon and endometrial cancers tend to go together in a syndrome called hereditary non-polyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC), also known as Lynch syndrome."

Males can also have breast cancer, frequently not diagnosed or missed because it's not seen as frequently. I would wonder if any males in that family were involved in the study.

I have a friend who's young son had breast cancer, she didn't have it. It was caught very early and fully removed and he is fine. If she had not asked me about a problem he was having it probably would have never been caught in time. I told her to take him immediately to my surgeon for examination. It was confirmed and surgery was scheduled. She still thanks me for that, she had no idea males could have breast cancer or any of the other breast tissue problems women have. They too have breasts! Men need to self exam too and definitely discuss any changes or abnormalities with the doctor.

So sad for those sisters. What a scary situation.

Smoking cigarettes increases your chances of getting lung cancer and stopping smoking reduces your risk of getting lung cancer. Non-smokers get lung cancer. Not all smokers get lung cancer. It doesn't "add up" except when you look at the statistics for the links between smoking and lung cancer across the population.

yes graywings, this is what we have been told for years and years by public health, but I'm seeing the exact opposite in real life which I find perplexing. I do not know a single smoker who has died of a smoking cancer, all the people I know who have, were non smokers. My father who has smoked since he was about 13 is in his late 70s now, why? shouldn't his smoking have given him lung cancer by now? It has made me question the legitimacy of things we have been led to believe from "science".

I think many of these studies/statistics are trumped up quite frankly. I suspect much of the research done is to gain attention and funding for researchers, nothing more, so as long as they purport to be discovering something worthwhile, whether it is truly proven or established or they have tweaked the results to a given outcome, is probably something we won't always know but the story in the OP goes to show that gene testing for breast cancer is perhaps a little dubious and may be misleading women into unnecessary breast removal, or false security about their risk of getting breast cancer in the future.

" It doesn't "add up" except when you look at the statistics for the links between smoking and lung cancer across the population."

The problem with this is, that if someone is a smoker and gets cancer, smoking will be the recorded "cause", if someone doesn't smoke then no one seems to know "the cause". That kind of thinking is flawed and illogical. If my sil was a smoker, her sinus cancer would have been put down to that. But a 41 year old non smoker who dies of sinus cancer and had no known risk factors will bring the "we just don't know" response from doctors, and that is the problem I have with it.

I do wonder about environmental triggers and by that I mean the toxins and off-gassing into our air and how that affects the body.. I'm a runner but I run in the mountain trails along a river in the forest. I see people running along a main road near me and do wonder what the car emissions are doing to their lungs as they breath them in. And it isn't normal breathing, it's deeper breathing as a result of the running.

Will the chemical emissions trigger changes in their genetic make-up as a result of this exposure? I don't know. How much of a change in the environment does it take to cause a change in the body. Is there a difference between city environment and rural. Reading the story of these sisters would be fascinating, sad but fascinating.

Have any of you read the book "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot? It talks about her cervical cancer cells (now known as HeLa cells) being used for medical research because for some reason, they were able to be grown outside of the body. It's a fascinating scientific story but a sad one for Henrietta and her family.

Some non-smokers (like me) were exposed for 18 or more years as children of smokers. Or worked in a smoking environment back when it was allowed, or the spouse smoked. I remember riding in the car, windows up, both parents smoking. So even tho' I never smoked and would be called a non-smoker, I feel like I actually did smoke for 22 years living with smokers.

Blfenton, I have the book but did not read it. I did go to an event where the author spoke. Fascinating and little-known story. These cells have probably affected us all in some way as far as medical research and advancement is concerned.

socks, there has only ever been to my knowledge a single study that conclusively showed any risk to health by passive smoking. In that study, the spouses who lived with a smoker for many decades had an increase risk of things such as smoke allergies, copd etc. Many people don't realise that passive smoking was passed off as a legitimate concern without any proof, and this was conjured up by the anti smoking lobby. It suited their agenda and they did a great job of selling it to the public without a shred of proof. The premise behind it is that it would be the only way to convince non smokers that smokers were not only endangering their own health, but that of non smokers as well, so that public opinion on smoking could be radically changed to one of non acceptance. Nowadays, people are so convinced that passive smoking is a huge threat (but unless you live with an indoor smoking spouse for decades it's not going to affect your health).

I also grew up in the type of environment you describe, sitting between my parents on the bench seat of a car while they both smoked. smoking indoors by my parents and visitors was also normal. It wasn't pleasant but I doubt it had any long term affects on me because I've done so much reading on the subject over the years, that I just don't buy into the passive smoking "hype". Most passive smoking is never going to give enough constant exposure to affect someone's health, and if people are that paranoid about it, I think they should perhaps avoid any pollution or traffic, since most of us are being exposed to many toxic and carcinogenic gases from that on a constant basis for the entire duration of our lives. There is no lobby telling us about passive pollution or exhaust dangers though.

I think we rely far too much on "science" that hasn't stood the test of time, as well as focusing on what we are told is "dangerous" while we seem to ignore much bigger issues that are around us everyday. Like I said above, I think exposure to pollution and traffic exhaust is probably one of the things that has never been studied to show what health effects it is having on us, we are too busy looking elsewhere because that is what we are instructed to do by scientists or public health, and IMO, it just has little credibility when you start to question it rather than simply accepting it as gospel.

Socks, I went through the same thing as a child, and then had to endure cigarette smoke in offices for most of my career.

My father who has smoked since he was about 13 is in his late 70s now,
why? shouldn't his smoking have given him lung cancer by now? Because not all smokers get lung cancer.

trancegemini, I don't think you should doubt the legitimacy of the science, but you should do more reading to understand what the science is saying: lung cancer is an increased risk, not an absolutely certainty, for smokers. Your father may never get lung cancer, but that doesn't mean the science is wrong. In fact, I read one study that fewer than 10% of smokers get lung cancer. Those are pretty good odds, I guess.

Smoking also increases the risk of pancreatic cancer, but yet a lot of non-smokers get pancreatic cancer. According to Johns Hopkins, cigarette
smoking doubles the risk of pancreatic cancer. Some scientists
have estimated that one in four, or one in five, cases of pancreatic
cancer are caused by smoking cigarettes.

Yes, bad environmental factors can increase your risk of cancer. Seems like yesterday I saw an article that stated women who drank liquor on an ongoing basis had a 12% increased chance of breast cancer. Why would alcohol do that? Could be what happened to those sisters. We don't know. My point being, it could be ANYTHING that causes cancer, since we don't know it all yet. I agree, we're just now learning and don't know enough about it still. Not fast enough, that's for sure!

The excerpt from the article:
"The Million Women Study in the United Kingdom (which included more than 28,000 women with breast cancer) provided a more recent, and slightly higher, estimate of breast cancer risk at low to moderate levels of alcohol consumption: every 10 grams of alcohol consumed per day was associated with a 12 percent increase in the risk of breast cancer (8)"

" Some scientists
have estimated that one in four, or one in five, cases of pancreatic
cancer are caused by smoking cigarettes."

See this is the type of "science" that irritates me. No doctor can definitively say what caused someone's cancer, it's all just conjecture, there is no test to say yes, it was caused by such and such. If they could know for sure what caused a cancer, then they could also know what caused a non smokers cancer (pancreatic or otherwise), and yet, big surprise they can't. So this type of guesswork means nothing. You can not say, this cancer was caused by this, and then have no clue what caused someone else's cancer, that makes no sense at all. The truth is they don't know what causes anyone's cancer, they are just hypothesizing and it has no real credibility, but like I said above, if a smoker gets cancer, that is what scientists or doctors will attribute it to, if a non smoker gets cancer they will just revert to "we don't know".

I would disagree with several of the assertions you wrote above, but there are too many variables in life for medical science to ever make the concrete determinations that you seem to want, trancegemini. Our current understanding of medical science is too imprecise for you.

I think there is plenty of research to show secondhand smoke is bad for people. Just increased asthma risk alone is an obvious and pretty well document link.

Just because some people who smoke never get lung cancer and some people who don't smoke do get lung cancer doesn't mean there isn't a correlation between smoking and lung cancer. It's just not a hundred percent correlation. It's sort of like some people who are in car accidents die and some people who aren't in car accidents die. You can't conclude that car accidents don't kill people.

Respectfully, I disagree with you somewhat, trance. How could second-hand smoke not be harmful? Have you ever washed a wall in a smoker's house? Well, that gunk is going into the lungs as well as on the wall.

You said there has not been any study showing risk to health from passive smoking except increased risk of COPD, allergies, etc. Those are risks to health. Especially that "etc."!! :-)

Also, how about the 2015 Surgeon General's Report:

According to the 2014 Surgeon General’s Report, there have been more than 20 million smoking-related deaths in the United States since 1964; 2.5 million of those deaths were among non-smokers who died from exposure to secondhand smoke. During that same time, 100,000 babies have died due to parental smoking (including smoking during pregnancy).

Not sure where the Surgeon General got his info but I can must assume it wasn't pulled out of thin air.

Studies have been done which showed that children who live near freeways do have more risk of lung problems.

I agree there is much we do not know or understand about cancer and the causes. Why one smoker lives to be 90 and another has a shortened life span.

Some scientists have estimated that one in four, or one in five, cases of pancreatic cancer are caused by smoking cigarettes."

Key words here are who are the scientist?? Who are they?? And also who paid for all the studies?? Does anyone remember the studies about red wine? Now whole milk vs 2%. makes no difference. So many so called studies. Will people ever investigate Who paid for these studies. Follow the money. Just can't believe people fall for this. You have internet. Read.

except increased risk of COPD, allergies, etc. Those are risks to health. Especially that "etc."!! :-)"

The point is this was not from incidental exposure, it was from prolonged exposure to a spouse who lived with a smoker for many decades, but this is not what people have been led to believe about passive smoking.

"According to the 2014 Surgeon General’s Report, there have been more
than 20 million smoking-related deaths in the United States since 1964;
2.5 million of those deaths were among non-smokers who died from
exposure to secondhand smoke. "

this is just based on flawed logic though.When you blame someone's death on something just because they were exposed to it during their life, then the results are obviously going to be biased and unreliable. (There is no known test to determine if someone died from secondhand smoke.) So when someone gets lung cancer and they have never smoked, it must be passive smoking all of a sudden. From memory it was a surgeon general back in the 50s or 60s who originally fabricated the notion of passive smoking in the first place and put the concept to the anti smoking lobby at a conference as a way to change public attitudes against smoking. It did what it was supposed to do, create social pressure against smoking which made the anti smoking lobby's job a whole lot easier but it wasn't based on science.

It was easy when a significant part of the population smoked to put the blame on a persons smoking for certain diseases, but since smoking rates have dropped significantly over the years they need to find a new way to explain these so now we are expected to believe that exposure to some past passive smoking is the cause. Why is passive exhaust fume inhalation never mentioned as the cause? You are probably inhaling more toxins in one traffic jam than a life time of passive smoking, yet we are supposed to believe passive smoking is killing lots of people and other risk factors are just never mentioned? It would certainly explain the discrepancy in why many long time smokers never get lung cancer and why some non smokers do, the real cause may be independent of smoking altogether, or smoking could be a secondary risk factor. What about those of us who grew up when leaded petrol was standard? How many of these active or passive smoking deaths were really caused by inhaling that really dirty fuel exhaust we were breathing in from old cars that didn't have emission controls?

The real issue isn't about smoking, it is about the amount of flawed "science" out there, researchers are likely designing flawed studies, or collecting information and interpreting it in a flawed way to a predetermined outcome or cherrypicking results, since they don't want to jeopardise their funding. How many times has one study told us one thing, only to be contradicted a few years later by another study? Even in recent years we've been led to believe that genetic testing is going to tell us if we are at risk of certain diseases or not, but if you read the story in the op, even that is flawed and perhaps as pointless as some other science being palmed off as something definitive. Roninsouthga is right, we need to do our research and not just passively accept being spoon fed the nonsensical garbage we often get fed, especially when "research" can be used by business to really increase profits when the results are favourable for them, and when they are directly or indirectly funding research, the results will likely get skewed in their favour (or buried if there is no way to make that happen).

"but there are too many variables in life for medical science to ever
make the concrete determinations that you seem to want, trancegemini "

But graywings, if science can't give me concrete determinations what good does it do for me, or anyone? I can guess or make assumptions on my own observations, I don't need medical science to do that and if they can't give the public solid irrefutable evidence of their findings rather than guesswork or agenda driven information then what they are doing is pretty pointless IMO and why I think much of the information we get is dubious.

Many years ago, I read something that I took to heart. It was in an article about people worrying, and the point of the article was that it was not productive to worry about things out of your control or threats that are statistically low risk, but there are some things you can control. Then it named three things you can do to improve your chances of having a
longer life: don't smoke, keep your weight under control, and wear
seatbelts.

Environmental pollution raises everyone's risk of lung cancer. But as an individual you have limited control over that. Whereas not smoking prevents that amount of carcinogens going into your lungs.

Trancegemini, I don't know how old you are, but you may not have been around when the tobacco companies had significant power and control in this country. They had TV advertisements with men in white coats claiming that smoking was beneficial to your health. In 1994, seven tobacco company executives stated before Congress that tobacco smoking was not additive. If you read the history of Big Tobacco, you will understand why there was such a press by health authorities to study tobacco use.

I think that studies get terribly distorted by media's attempts to summarize them into two sentences, and there are studies that are biased from the get-go. But the studies are generally available to people who want to read them in their entirety. Trancegemini, it is not required that you read or agree with any study. You are free to make your personal decisions based on what makes sense to you. But when it comes to public health policy, good, solid, unbiased studies are needed. You may not understand the concept of statistically determining risk, and some of it can be counter-intuitive, but risk assessment is an everyday part of business.

graywings I do believe that much of the the anti tobacco lobby started with good intentions, but from much reading about it, it appears over the years it has also changed. Most of the highly respected people in that field have apparently moved on feeling the job was done to it's best ability, and many of these former lobbyists now have a dim view of those remaining in the field. The thing that appears to have changed, is that big pharmaceutical companies are now very involved in funding the lobbyists, much of this is done indirectly but it essentially creates an environment where the lobby in many ways exists as a disguised marketing outlet for pharma products (like expensive nicotine replacement therapies and medication which apparently have a very low success rate,) so smokers need to be continually prodded to keep quitting repeatedly so the lobbyists job is to keep regurgitating the dangers via the media and informing the public of supposed "new evidence" to encourage that which often seems to involve cherry picking from the results. These products have a 95% failure rate so it is simply good business for pharma companies to take this approach. I think much of the research that is done these days is similar, and is largely marketing in disguise rather than independent research.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating for anyone to smoke (I myself don't smoke) but I wouldn't describe myself as anti smoker either, I think truth in information is important but it seems to be in short supply. I am very dubious about any so called medical research these days. Too many contradictory studies, thinly veiled studies that seem to have become a new form of marketing because people now will eat, use, buy pretty much anything if some half baked study says it has such and such health properties which IMO are often based on these dubious studies with hidden agendas behind them. This is what I find objectionable.

All I need to know about tobacco is that it is not beneficial to anyone's health and is detrimental to the health of individuals in varying degrees.

I'm a nurse and I see a lot of cancer related to smoking/tobacco. Lung, bladder, mouth. I also see a lot of COPD deaths & heart disease. My mom smoked for most of her life. She finally quit but spent years in smoke filled casinos and with her smoking friends after she quit. She died of heart disease at 69. I have asthma and never smoked. I probably have it because I was around her all my growing up years, worked in a casino when I was a teen. No ventilation and no windows in the coffee shop I worked in. The first 2 hours of work were spent choking,coughing, with watery eyes, before I got acclimated. I also worked in an onion dehydration factory for a couple of years. I breathed in massive amounts of dirt.

I forgot to mention that every time I've checked a patient's history who comes in with bladder cancer they have a history of smoking. Doesn't mean they all do, but the ones I've looked at, took care of myself or was charge nurse and had to look at their chart.