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Heredity and Cancer
Cancer is not considered an inherited illness because
most cases of cancer, perhaps 80 to 90 percent,
occur in people with no family history of the disease.
However, a person's chances of developing cancer
can be influenced by the inheritance of certain kinds
of genetic alterations. These alterations tend to
increase an individual's susceptibility to developing
cancer in the future. For example, about 5 percent of
breast cancers are thought to be due to inheritance of
particular form(s) of a "breast cancer susceptibility
gene."
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