Medical science allows people a glimpse into the future

Filed in archive on June 18, 2006

What would you do if you found out that a non-vital part of your body had a 70 percent chance of developing a deadly cancer sometime in the future? Would you try to play the odds, or would you remove the body part as a pre-emptive measure? A recent news article reports that some people are making the difficult decision to go under the knife in order to head off cancer before it strikes.

Mike Slabaugh and ten of his cousins had their stomachs removed when they found out that they carried a gene that gave them a 70 percent chance of developing the same deadly cancer that killed their grandmother, Golda Bradfield, in 1960. Doctors have noted that the family is the largest one thus far to undergo surgery to prevent disease.

Though the operation was life changing, Slabaugh notes that sixteen months after the surgery, he and his family are doing very well. Researchers believe that someday, perhaps as early as 2010, it will be possible for people to routinely forecast their chances of contracting diseases even without genetic defects to act as a warning.

According to the article, 22,000 people will get a diagnosis of stomach cancer and about half of those people will die from the disease. The form that runs in the Bradfield family, hereditary diffuse gastric cancer, is extremely rare with only 100 families diagnosed worldwide.

While the prospect of detecting diseases many years before they strike is exciting, I can't help but be a little unnerved by the idea of knowing too much about what kinds of illnesses might eventually kill me. But I have no doubt that this new research will mean that a lot of lives will be saved... and a lot of money will be made.

About the author: In her spare time, knotheadus writes for Epinions.com and maintains her own Web site, knot-heads.com.