A 27-year-old woman, who five years earlier had learned she harbored a pathogenic variant in the BRCA1 gene, was now considering removing her breasts and ovaries to reduce her risk for breast and ovarian cancer. She came to see a genetic counselor to discuss her...
Around a decade ago, a psychologist in her mid-50s attended a wellness conference, where everyone was discussing a popular direct-to-consumer genetic testing company. The possibility of learning about the underlying genetics of her inherited traits piqued her...
A 46-year-old woman who claimed to have pathogenic variants in both BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes and a strong family history of breast cancer came to a surgeon seeking risk-reducing mastectomies. Although this woman did not have breast cancer, based on her account of her...
A 36-year-old, non-English-speaking, female emigrant from the Middle East came to see a genetic counselor at a California healthcare system in 2019. She had recently moved to the state, and in the process of reestablishing care at a large academic healthcare facility,...
In the summer of 2019, a genetic counselor at an academic healthcare facility saw a 39-year-old African American woman who had been recently diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma. A mammogram and subsequent biopsy of the lump she had felt on her left breast turned...
