Is terminal cancer hereditary?

I find it very important to address this question as well as the previous answer in order to keep this site as a reputable reference and I will be adding to it as I get time. Although cancer is not hereditary perse (in that if your father or mother has a type of cancer you will get it) there is a very large hereditary component to developing cancer given that the disease is caused by mutations in DNA or the way in which genes are expressed. Some types of cancers have a much larger hereditary component than others and some are caused mostly by environmental factors which damage DNA, such as free radical accumulation. There is a diverse array of the hereditary components to developing cancers, but types of cancer with a strong hereditary component are called familial cancers, which include breast cancers caused by inherited mutations in the BRACA1 or BRACA2 genes, or colon cancer caused by familial adenomatous polyposis, which is an inherited mutation in the APC gene. Inheritance of the APC gene will lead to the developement of colon cancer in more than 90% of patients.

In response to the previous answerer, and off topic, genetics is not a new discipline and was developed by Gregor Mendel in the late 1800s. The genetics of cancer is complicated only in the fact that cancer is an extremely diverse disease. You can believe what you want about cancer as a disease, but I would rather take a drug which has undergone rigorous scientific scrutiny to statistically be proven to have a positive effect on a disease than to take something someone told me made their mother feel better every time they took it. To clarify, Dr. Mathias Rath has NEVER won a Nobel Prize and is not well respected by most of the scientific community. Dr. Rath lives off of the fame that he worked under the acclaimed chemist Linus Pauling who has won two Nobel Prizes. I am a medical/cancer researcher working for a non profit organization, I get no money from the sale of any drugs whether my work developed them or not and this is THE TRUTH for the vast amount of medical researchers out there who mostly work for the government, hospitals or academic level. If you want to think about it logically, of course pharmaceutical companies want to make a profit, everyone wants to make money, but these companies could not make a lot of money off a drug which didn't work. I wonder if the previous answerer thinks Dr. Rath does not make a hefty profit off the sale of his very expensive supplements. People pay for and take drugs because they work and are proven to work. If one company’s drug is more effective than another’s, it sells better, and that company makes more money, this competition ensures that the best drugs with the least amount of side effects make it to the market. I will admit the system is not perfect, there are a few bad apples and that I would like to see a lot more expenditure by pharmaceutical companies on research or on goodwill rather than on marketing and paying dividends, but for the most part the system works. For example take the new vaccine Gardasil sold by Merck, it is not going to be a blockbuster drug because it is a preventable treatment, if pharmaceutical companies were only about making the most money they possibly can, Merck would have never invested research into this product, but this treatment still made it to the market and will end up saving thousands of lives a year by preventing cervical cancer. I do agree with the previous answerer however, to do your own research, and when you don't understand something, to ask a professional. Cancer is an extremely complicated disease and treatments for it can be just as confusing. I am sure if you do this you will see the vast progress the scientific community has made in the treatment of this disease where statistics show that 5 year survival rates have increased from 25% to 50% of all patients diagnosed with cancer in the last 40 years. For one example, look at the treatment of breast cancer. Breast cancer incidence in women has increased from 1 in 20 in to 1 in 8 in the last 40 years, however currently over 70% of women diagnosed will live past 10 years compared to less than 50% 40 years ago. This dramatic increase in long term survival is largely attributed to the development of adjunct therapy using drugs. I would doubt you could find a reputable doctor in the world who would have their own mother take a vitamin c supplement over tamoxifen or an aromatase inhibitor (of course this is given that they love their mother).

Answer is cancer hereditary/cancer info

the concept of what is hereditary and what isn't is not as simple as popular concept allows. Genetics is a relatively new science and not cut and dry as TV and movie writers would have you believe. Just because Momma had something doesn't mean you will get it. after all there is quite a lot of genetic input from the other side of the family.....the numbers and the math the inherited factors are not that simple.

if you are worried about cancer read the Dr. Mathias Rath site on the Internet. He won a Nobel prize for research he did in Europe. Stanford University in California finally endorsed his studies. He knows how cancer advances and how to stop it and how to repair the damage without chemotherapy. Every time we used his approach on my mother she got better. she did die but not from cancer...something else entirely (hospital goof up) The cancer industry is a multi billion dollar industry...if people get well millions will lose their comfortable incomes. That IS THE TRUTH. Arm yourself with the best current information on cancer, put away fear and don't buy into what you think genetics /heredity have to do with it. As i said there is too much variability and environmental nutritional causation in some cancers. Don't scare yourself with a self imposed death sentence in your mind about heredity...get the facts go to the Mathias Rath site for a solid start. He is the Doctor and research authority on the subject from outside the US. He has a book you can read on line or download.......understand it before you freak out about it. And don't kid yourself ...there are plenty of people benefiting $$$$$$$$$$ from dead end chemos and not approaching cancer sensibly.....yes they would do that.......some people go into medicine strictly for the money. Success to you. Fear not...Arm yourself with available information.

Answer

I use to work many years ago for a doctor at UBC in British Columbia that found 3 cures for cancer. Because of the lack of funding by the B.C. Government he was offered a great job in Wisconsin and I was sad to see him go. He made sure to tell me it was not about the money, but he was getting a fantastic lab to do his work in. I admired this doctor a great deal and was happy to realize he would have the lab of his dreams to continue to find cures for cancer.

There are well over a 100 different types of cancer and EVERY person does carry dormant cancer cells in their body. What scientists are trying to find out is what actually activates the cancer cells in some people while not in others.

As far as genetics, yes, it can be passed on, but, I agree with the above poster that because your parents had cancer or an aunt, uncle, sister, brother did, doesn't mean you will. Just like diabetes or any other disease, can can pass over a generation or your brother or sister could have it and you will never get it. It's important that you let your doctor know the different diseases in your family so you will be continually checked for these diseases when you go in for your yearly physical. This is called preventative medicine and if you are top of things and should ever get cancer or any other disease there is help and often curable methods if the disease is caught early. Most people that pass away from a disease have ignored the warning signs possibly out of fear of the unknown and finding out whether they have it or not. Fear is the enemy!

Example: My mother's side of the family has several siblings with diabetes, but I don't have it, yet my younger brother does. My father's side of the family had a lot of alcoholism in his family (I consider this a disease as well) and yet my brother and I are not (we chose to watch how much we drank.)

Drug companies love to advertise anywhere they can to make people paranoid and want either shove them into taking vitamins by the carload, to other expensive medications to stave off diseases. Even getting vaccines for this and that. It amazes me that many people will rush out and get it without researching it on the Internet to see what your options are. Drug companies want to make money! I am not saying that there are times when we need to take medications, but a little less TV, less searching for diseases on the Internet if you have a twinge of pain because if we choose most diseases each one of us can say we have one or more of the symptoms stated in the article on the Web.

Don't live life on "what ifs" and just enjoy it. If we all pondered on what could be with our health we would drive ourselves crazy and probably wouldn't get the disease anyway. What a waste of life!