In This Issue:

- Who Needs to Worry and Why

- What BRCA Is, and How Testing Is Done

- Targeted Testing Is Most Accurate

- Recent Health Care News You Should Know About

- Check Out Our Previous Tips

- Excerpt from What BRCA Is, and How Testing Is Done:

Everybody carries both the BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 genes.

The genename comes from BR for breast and CA for cancer. In fact, we all have two copies of each gene, one passed down from our mother, and the other from our father. The genes make proteins that help repair errors in our DNA that pop up from time to time when our cells divide and duplicate their genetic code. Mutations in either BRCA gene can disable the repair process and make both women and men carriers of the defect susceptible to certain kinds of cancer....