Secret ancestry, hidden health risks

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Judi Zimmer on July 18, 2009 at 5:05pm

IMO, it is vital that all Jewish couples thinking of starting a family have genetic counseling, and Jewish women have genetic counseling for markers for both breast and ovarian cancer.

Permalink Reply by Schelly Talalay Dardashti on July 18, 2009 at 5:21pm

Absolutely, Judi.

The problem is that many women don't know they have Jewish ancestry! So all women need to be tested: those who know they are Jewish, those of Hispanic ancestry (who likely have Jewis roots) and many others.

Genetics counselors and medical professionals seem very silly when they don't understand Hispanic Jewish roots and ask, as the the doctor did my friend in NM, if that very Hispanic family had Ashkenazi heritage.

Those professionals need more education about this.

There are also many Sephardim who went to Eastern Europe and "became" Ashkenazi, and these individuals don't know who they are. On the flip side, Hispanics with Jewish ancestry are in the millions in just the US.

It is a serious problem for everyone.

Schelly

Permalink Reply by Judi Zimmer on July 18, 2009 at 5:25pm

Indeed, Schelly--within the last couple of months (!), I fund out that it is most likely that my maternal grandfather's ancestors, whom I always thought of typical Ashkenazi from Galicia, were originally Sephardic Jews, through DNA testing that indicated a unique genetic mutation that was pinpointed to Spain, about 500 years ago!!!!

Permalink Reply by Kristen Burns Darling on October 13, 2009 at 2:32am

Absolutely true. My husband has Dystonia 1. But it took us years to get a diagnosis partially because his doctors in the Navy were not familiar with it, and after he retired, neither was our g.p. and partially because there is noone in the family that knows of anyone else in the family, that may have had it. A neurologist that was visiting our g.p.'s office while my husband was happened to see him in the waiting room and asked our g.p. if Michael was of ashkenazi descent, and told him to send my husband to him. I was pregnant with our two year old at the time and had all the genetic testing that wasn't available when our older kids were born,(they were 12, 14, and 18 ) and since then we have had all the kids tested. Two are CF carriers, and two have the same markers for the Dystonia 1. I have the B49 gene,(My mother died from ovarian cancer when I was 10, two of my grandmothers had breast cancer, so I almost anticipated that I would be positive for it, and was the last one to get tested because I was afraid of the results) and so do all three of my girls. If I was in the position of just starting out again, planning a family, etc. I would insist that we both have genetic counseling and testing.