Karen Iris Tucker
By Karen Iris Tucker
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Culture Genetics Lab Refuses To Share Data That Could Save Lives
Myriad Genetics may have lost its singular hold on the market for BRCA1 and BRCA2 testing in May 2013 when the Supreme Court ruled against the patenting of genes, but few outside the science and medical communities are aware that Myriad continues to possess a repository of patient data from BRCA testing that it does…
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Culture Meet the Fifth (Jewish) Beatle — Manager Brian Epstein
In his 1964 autobiography, written three years before he died, at the age of 32, Beatles manager Brian Epstein recalled feeling the weight of his lineage as he sought a balance between the wishes of his Orthodox Jewish parents and the aspects of his life that were increasingly incongruent with their traditional values. “I am…
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Culture BRCA ‘Jewish’ Cancer Gene Mutations Often Go Untested — At Deadly Cost
When Marcia Watson-Levy was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997 at age 58, she suspected that heredity played a role: Her sister Rhoda had died of breast cancer 12 years before, at 52. Yet Watson-Levy, who then lived in San Francisco, said that none of her physicians — her primary doctor, her surgeon or her…
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Culture Delays Plague Breast and Ovarian Cancer Research
Regulatory hurdles, along with dosing problems, have come to plague a new class of cancer drugs that showed highly encouraging results in early research. Those obstacles have frustrated breast and ovarian cancer patients who are carriers of cancer-causing mutations, particularly prevalent among Ashkenazi Jews, and for whom it was hoped the medicines would prove especially…
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News Sandra Bernhard Shows Her Softer Side
Her followers on Twitter know that Sandra Bernhard shares a dizzying number of missives. “I mix it up, honey, tomorrow night is a vegan potato kale enchilada. That’s how we roll,” said a recent tweet. Another said simply: “7:20 is the new 10:30.” To some, the domesticity might seem surprising. After all, Bernhard is a…
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Culture A Tremor in the Research Force
Genetics has long been thought to play a relatively minor role when it comes to the development of Parkinson’s disease. So it came as a surprise to the medical community five years ago when Dr. Susan Bressman and her colleagues at the Beth Israel Medical Center in New York reported that a single genetic mutation…
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Culture Therapy Shows Promise in Trials for Hereditary Cancer Patients
An emerging therapy that attacks cancer cells continues to show promise, most recently in two international studies on women who have breast and ovarian cancer and are carriers of cancer-causing mutations particularly prevalent among Ashkenazi Jews. Two trials tested the experimental capsule olaparib on women whose breast or ovarian cancer had spread to other organs,…
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Culture Experts: Testing for Breast and Ovarian Cancers Still Lags
When Wendy Mailman’s mother, Eloyce, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer last February, her concerned daughter immediately began scouring the Internet for information. Through medical sites and an ovarian cancer listserv, Mailman learned that women of Eastern European Jewish descent were at an increased risk for inheriting a predisposition for both breast and ovarian cancer. One…
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