Introducation to Symposium: Workshop on the BRCA1 Breast Cancer Gene in the Jewish Population, Cleveland, Ohio, 1997

Mehlman, Maxwell J.

English

Case Western Reserve University School of Law

Case Western Reserve University School of Law Scholarly Commons Faculty Publications 1997 Symposium: Workshop on Inherited Breast Cancer in Jewish Women: Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications Maxwell J. Mehlman Case Western University School of Law, maxwell.mehlman@case.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/faculty_publications  Part of the Health Law and Policy Commons Repository Citation Mehlman, Maxwell J., "Symposium: Workshop on Inherited Breast Cancer in Jewish Women: Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications" (1997). Faculty Publications. 545. https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/faculty_publications/545 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Case Western Reserve University School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of Case Western Reserve University School of Law Scholarly Commons. SYMPOSIU:rv1: WORKSHOP 01'-J INHERITED BREAST CANCER IN JEWISH WOMEN: ETHICAL, LEGAL, AND SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS INTRODUCTION ON APRIL 26, 1996, the Law-Medicine Center and the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Case Western Reserve Univer-sity held the first nati9nal workshop on the ethical, legal, and social implications associated with recent discoveries linking the BRCAI breast cancer gene to a specific population, that of Ashkenazic Jewish women. The idea for this workshop origi-nated with Tom Murray, Director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the School of Medicii"1e; Eric Juengst, the first direc-tor of the ELSI program at NIH and now a professor at the School of Medicine, and myself. The three of us also served as moderators during the workshop. We wish to thank the Leon-ard and Harvey Krieger President's Endowment Fund for its generous support, without which this program would not have been possible. In 1995, researchers identified a gene - BRCAI -which appears to be associated with an elevated risk of breast cancer in some women. Initially, there was little interest in screening women for the BRCAl gene because it had many mutations, each one of which would have to be tested for indi-vidually, but no single one of which was prevalent in a signifi-cant number of breast cancer patients. Later, researchers an-nounced that one BRCAl mutation is associated with breast cancer that affects one percent of all Ashkenazic Jewish wom-en, and accounts for almost forty percent of the breast cancer cases in this population. 1 2 HEALTH MATRIX [Vol. 7: I The possibility of population-based genetic screening for this mutation raises a number of. ethical, legal, . and social is-sues. In-depth discussion of these issues at the CWRtJ work-shop provided significant insights· for religipus and. cominunity leaders, public hetilth ·officials, clinicians and genetic counsel-lors, am~ public policy analysts. The results of the workshop will be of further significance for ethnically based genetic screening programs in general, SL'lCe it is expected that, in the future, researchers will discover many additional genetic muta-tions associated with disorders within specific ethnic groups. The workshop was an informal exchange among invited experts in a variety of disciplines in a rapidly developing area. The discussion focused on seven papers that are being pub-lished in this symposium volume. An account of the workshop, prepared by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist B.D. Colen, has appeared in the newsletters of the Center for Biomedical Ethics and the Law-Medicine Center. Maxwell J. Mehlmant t Arthur E. Petersilge Professor of Law and Director, The Law-Medicine Center. 

Symposium: Workshop on Inherited Breast Cancer in Jewish Women: Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications

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Symposium: Workshop on Inherited Breast Cancer in Jewish Women: Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications

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