• Israeli soldiers, in Haiti to assist victims of last week’s catastrophic earthquake, delivered a healthy baby, over the weekend, in a makeshift hospital that the Israel Defense Forces set up on a Port-au-Prince athletic field. The baby’s mother reportedly plans to name her newborn son “Israel.”
• As Myriad Genetics prepares to go to court to defend its right to patent two genes linked to breast cancer and ovarian cancer — genes that are most prevalent among Ashkenazic Jews — the Los Angeles Times comes out in favor of barring patents for gene sequences.
• Sara Netanyahu is being sued by a former housekeeper, who is charging that Israel’s First Lady was emotionally abusive. According to a report in the Jerusalem Post, Mrs. Netanyahu “expected [the housekeeper] to be on call 24 hours a day, and once even phoned her at 2 a.m. to reprimand her for failing to properly cover a pillow.” The Prime Minister’s office says the woman’s claims are false, and that she received warm and affectionate treatment from Mrs. Netanyahu.”
New, less-aggressive guidelines for breast cancer screenings do not apply to women at high risk for the disease, such as those who have tested positive for the BRCA genetic mutations, which are most common in Ashkenazi Jewish women.
Released Monday by the government-funded U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the new guidelines increase the recommended age at which most women should begin to get mammograms to 50, from 40. The task force, composed of “private-sector experts in prevention and primary care,” also recommends that women between the ages 50 and 74 get mammograms every two years — instead of annually — and that doctors stop teaching women how to do breast self exams.
Such changes to breast cancer screening protocols are not recommended for women at high risk for the disease. Those women are encouraged to speak with their physicians about when to begin screening.
“For women at high risk, the guidelines are different than those that apply to women who are 40 and have an ordinary risk of breast cancer,” said Rochelle Shoretz, the executive director of Sharsheret — a New Jersey-based organization that provides genetic counseling and support services to young, Jewish women with breast cancer and ovarian cancer.
The genetic mutations that greatly increase a woman’s chance of getting breast cancer — mutations that are common among Ashkenazi Jewish women — also put her at high risk for ovarian cancer. So it makes sense that Sharsheret, which, since 2001, has been offering free support services to young Jewish women living with (or at high risk for) breast cancer, will be expanding to provide for women with ovarian cancer and those predisposed to the disease.
“We’ve found that women [with breast cancer] who are in our program, and women who are thinking about genetic testing, also have ovarian cancer on their minds,” Elana Silber, Sharsheret’s director of operations, told The Sisterhood.
Sharsheret is targeted at Jewish women in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. The organization offers confidential genetic counseling, peer support groups, health information, and seminars on topics such as parenting young children while undergoing cancer treatment. Within the next year, these services will made available to women suffering from or at risk for ovarian cancer, Silber said.
