Abstract
The report in this issue ofThe Journalby Blattner and his colleagues (p 259) contributes still further evidence that our load of cancer is not borne equally by all members of society. The members of their family who inherit the responsible dominant Mendelian gene have a high incidence of neoplasia. The neoplasms include sarcomas, brain tumors, leukemias, and breast cancer and are clearly a nonrandom segment of the spectrum of all cancers. The median age of onset for affected gene carriers is the young age of 30 years. The ages of onset are related to the neoplastic types in that their spectrum is appropriate for the observed distribution of ages. Although the predisposing gene is highly penetrating, there are some persons, notably subject II-35, who clearly carried the mutant gene but did not have a cancer at early age, although subject II-35 may have died of prostatic cancer. Other
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