[Sandy in Silicon Valley]

Dear Farign,

Do you have a family history of breast/ ovarian/ prostate/ stomach cancer?

If not, my impression has been that it's a very small risk that you have a BRCA 1 or 2 mutation.

If you DID have one of the known mutations, it only means that you have a higher likelihood of being diagnosed with bc during your lifetime.

For the average woman, the risk is somewhere between 12-17%. For a woman with a BRCA 1 or 2 mutation, the risk is, I think, 50-70%. That does NOT mean that every woman who carries a BRCA mutation is going to be dx'd with bc in her lifetime.

Even if you DID carry one of the predisposing mutations, your daughter would only have a 50-50 chance of having it as well, since she got half of her chromosomes from her father.

My mother was dx'd with bc at age 55, I was dx'd at age 44, my grandmother died of colon cancer in her 70's, and 4 out of her 5 siblings had some sort of related cancer - cervical, uterine, prostate, stomach. It was only after discovering this information that I got tested in 1997. I have three grown daughters, and only one has been genetically tested for the BRCA1 mutated gene that I have, so far. The determining factor is: Would she do anything differently, medically, if she found out she carried the mutation? Such as preventive double mastectomies, hysterectomy, ooperectomy, going on Tamoxifen or an AI - BEFORE being diagnosed with bc? In any case, age ten seems way too early, to me, to deal with that kind of information/ choice.

Also, it's unfortunately a reality that there's still a chance of health insurance discrimination, if your daughter is diagnosed with a pre-existing condition, which some companies consider a genetic predisposition to particular diseases. So when she becomes independent, if she needs private, individual insurance, she could be refused.

For all of these reasons, if I were in your shoes, I wouldn't go for genetic testing.

(((hugs)))
Sandy in Silicon Valley