According to a New England Journal of Medicine article, the answer is no. Women with the breast cancer mutations BRCA1 and BRCA2 seem to have similar survival rates as women without these gene mutations.

A clinical trial was conducted including 1,500 patients. The researchers wanted to see if the patients with gene mutations had worse outcomes then those that did not have the gene mutations.

The researchers found:

• Overall, deaths rates from breast cancer were not significantly different among patients with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations from those without the mutations.
• Among patients who underwent treatment with chemotherapy, death rates from breast cancer were not significantly different between patients with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations from those without the mutations.

Cancer is a complicated disease often described by those who know it well in confusing medical, technical, and scientific terms. There's a way to understand it in simple terms, though. And a recent CBS news story features a great run-down on the disease, its causes, how it grows, and more.

Think about this:

• Cancer refers to any one of a large number of diseases characterized by the uncontrollable growth of abnormal cells. These cells have the ability to infiltrate and destroy normal tissue and can spread -- metastasize -- throughout the body.

• Cancer is caused by damage in the DNA. DNA is like a set of instructions for cells and tells cells how to grow and divide. Normal cells can develop mutations in their DNA but can repair most of them. If they cannot make a repair, the cells often die. But certain mutated cells don't repair and don't die. They instead grow and become cancerous.

• Normal, healthy cells grow in an orderly, well-controlled way. They live for a set period of time and then die on schedule. Dead cells are replaced by new normal cells. Cancer cells, in contrast, grow in an uncontrolled manner. They don't die. They accumulate. One malignant cell becomes two, two become four, four become eight, and so on, until a mass of cells -- a tumor -- is created. Tumors remain small until they're able to attract their own blood supply, which allows them to obtain the oxygen and nutrients they need to grow larger.

• Not all cancers form tumors. Leukemia, for example, is a cancer of the blood, bone marrow, lymphatic system, and spleen.
  
  
• Cancer can take decades to develop. By the time a cancerous mass is detected, it's likely that 100 million to one billion cancer cells are present, and the original cancer may have been dividing for five years or more.

• Lung cancer is the top cancer killer among men and women and will kill 160,390 people in 2007.

There are various risk factors that can contribute to the development of breast cancer. Being female is the single biggest risk factor that on its own puts all women in jeopardy. But there are other risks -- many beyond our control and some more significant than others -- that can help explain why some women are diagnosed with the most common cancer in women in the United States. And why others are not.

If we made no further progress in breast cancer research from this day on, the number of women dying from breast cancer five years from now would still drop substantially because we've progressed so much over the past few years, says MD Eric Winer in the October 2006 issue of Oprah magazine. Winer, director of the Breast Oncology Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, is right. There has been a lot of progress. Breast cancer research is on a roll. And here are seven reasons why.

In a surprising discovery, 200 mutated genes linked to the development, growth and spread of breast and colon cancers have been identified by Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center scientists. This information might provide vital research into the future treatment for these cancers.

Other cancers can be studied using the methods these researchers, called the Hopkins gene hunters, used in discovering the 200 genetic mutations for breast and colon cancers.

"This gives us some understanding of why breast and colon cancers, and most likely other cancers as well, are very different diseases and develop through different processes. When we say this will drive cancer research for the next couple of decades, this is one of the reasons," states Kenneth Kinzler, Ph.D., professor of oncology and co-director of the Ludwig Center at Johns Hopkins. "Now researchers will study how these mutations occur in breast and colon cancers, perhaps searching for environmental agents or cellular processes that drive these changes."

To read more detail on this study and discovery, visit Genome Code Cracked for Breast and Colon Cancers. An MP3 file and XML for iPods has been provided so that you can listen to Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center scientists discuss this research.

Oregon Health & Science University Cancer Institute researchers have developed a new method of identifying abnormalities that cause cells to develop into cancerous ones that is much quicker and far less expensive than the traditional method of identification.

According to the researchers, DNA sequencing to find cancer-causing mutations in genes is time consuming and expensive, and the vast majority of mutations it identifies don't cause cancer. With the new method, in less than two months they were able to find three activating mutations of the tyrosine kinase JAK3 in acute myeloid leukemia cells.

"It may have taken years to find these mutations with DNA sequencing alone," said Jeffrey Tyner, Ph.D, a senior author of the study. "As we streamline our process, we will be able to analyze cancer cells for mutations in a matter of just weeks."

"It moves forward the personalized medicine model where cancer treatment is tailored for each patient based on the molecular mutations at the heart of his or her cancer," states Dr. Brian Druker, JELD-WEN chair of leukemia research in the OHSU Cancer Institute and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

One day Dr. Druker believes this new method of identifying abnormalities that cause cells to turn into cancerous ones can be applied to many cancers and that there will be a targeted drug developed for each cancer. For more information, visit OHSU Cancer Institute news.

It seems like common sense to me -- that lifestyle choices can affect a person's risk for contracting cancer -- but apparently, many people are not aware of this. Or they are aware but are not heeding the advice that might just save them from this life-threatening disease. According to Carolyn "Bo" Aldige, president of the Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation, in Alexandria, Va., it's not undiscovered treatments and therapies that are key to fighting off cancer -- it's likely that the toll cancer takes can be reduced by lifestyle changes and routine screenings. Aldige reports that nearly half of all cancer deaths are preventable. And she urges us to consider these facts.

• Smoking is the most preventable cause of death in the United States and causes nearly one in five deaths, killing about 438,000 Americans each year. Yet 45 million adults still smoke -- 23 percent of them men and 19 percent of them women.
• Poor nutrition, inactivity, and obesity account for one in three of the 564,830 deaths from all cancers. Experts say that excess calories cause mutations that start genes traveling down pathways that cause cells to divide out of control -- and that's what cancer is. According to Aldige, if each person could magically acquire the perfect body mass index, there would be a whole lot less colorectal, breast, and prostate cancers.
• It requires little time and not much discomfort for certain screenings that can detect cancer at an early enough stage that it can be successfully treated. There are already screenings for breast cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, testicular cancer, cervical cancer, and skin cancer. And soon, there may be a simple screening for lung cancer too.
• A diet rich in nutrients and vitamin supplements helps maintain health and prevent cancer.

There are some highly effective defenses against cancer -- but they require some attention and effort on the part of each individual. Not everyone will make health-conscious choices -- some for reasons out of their control (lack of access to screenings, for example) and some for reasons I personally do not understand. But maybe that's because I have already had cancer and I know that I don't ever wish for it to return. So for that reason alone, I plan to adhere to the considerations listed above. It seems like common sense to me.

Parents who know they are at high-risk for passing on genetic defects that can lead to disease for their child, have been relying on genetic testing to screen embryos for inherited diseases. British scientists announced today they have developed a new test that focuses on DNA fingerprinting near the gene. The new test allows more couples to be tested since they are looking at DNA markers opposed to trying to find the gene, which can vary. According to the researchers, this is a more reliable test. The method involves taking a cell from the embryo to detect signs of the DNA marker and discarding it if it does show the likelihood of gene mutation. Only healthy embryos are used during the in-vitro fertilization, ensuring parents a healthy child.

Right now, there are strict ethical controls on this type of medical procedure, but in the years to come, when these types of procedures become more commonplace, and less expensive, will the controls begin to relax? I am not going to argue against choosing a healthy embryo over one that carries a genetic mutation that might one day lead to disease later in life, but I am still hesitant to embrace where the medical field might be going with these new tests and the potential for superficial application such as -- say -- designer babies. Paris Hilton mommies embryonic shopping for a child. I realize that is an extreme example, but it is the one I fear most. In addition, I am not an adherent of scientific worship and see medical science as a very shaky inexact science. The more I learn, the more I realize they do not know. However, here we are, and you can't un-ring a bell. Hopefully the future will prove all my misgivings wrong.

For more thoughts on designer babies, related posts: Woman pregnant with cancer-free baby and Disease-free designer babies embryo selection.

Multiple pregnancies for women who carry the inherited mutations in BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes appears to reduce the risk of developing breast cancer, according to researchers from the German Cancer Research Center. The International BRCA1/2 Carrier Cohort Study set out to examine if the same breast cancer protective factors of multiple births and breastfeeding provided to women without the genetic mutations extended to women with the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes. 

According to the study, women with one child have the same breast cancer risk as childless women. The risk of developing breast cancer after age 40 was lowered by 14 percent with every child. Interestingly, women with a BRCA2 mutation had twice the cancer risk if they had given birth to their first child after age 20 compared to those who had become mothers before age 20. For carriers of BRCA1 mutations, it was the exact opposite. The risk of getting breast cancer was lower in women who had given birth to their first child after age 30. The only thing about research -- it is only correct until the next research study. I only say this because I hear over and over from women who are surprised by a breast cancer diagnosis when they did not have any of the risk factors or they fit the profile of a woman with reduced risk. If you have the inherited BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, the study results are a generalization, and your individual situation might differ. I would not sit here and read into this study that you are going to get breast cancer because you only gave birth to one child -- or that you didn't have children at the optimum age.