Kind: captions
Language: en
the burden of knowing is what journalist
Katherine Elton calls
it for this age of personalized genetic
testing it's not personal people exist
in families and by the nature of the
fact that you have
tested you are revealing this
information to people who may not want
to know
Elton herself was offered a test for
mutations in the brca1 gene linked with
a high chance of getting breast or
ovarian
cancer her mother her grandmother and
her aunt had their lives cut short by
these
diseases if Elton had the mutation she
could minimize her risks by having her
breasts and ovaries
removed if she wanted children
she would have to have them before
surgery I didn't want those results I
didn't want to have that in the back of
my mind and maybe make me settle for the
wrong guy and rush into having kids
before I was ready I mean I think there
is a real fine line between avoiding
death and ruining her
life but Elton 2 has paid for her
decision in 2008 while pregnant with her
second child she was diagnosed with
breast
cancer yet despite the ordeal of surgery
and chemotherapy and the risk the cancer
might come back she's convinced she did
the right thing by not getting tested in
her
20s if I had made those decisions at 27
I can't even believe what I would have
missed out on and as the technology
becomes more accessible people just
think well this is what you do but I
happen to believe that some of the costs
of knowing our genetic Destiny can
outweigh some of the benefits