Alan Richelson is Jewish and has lost one sister to breast cancer and worries over another sister who is a breast cancer survivor.
For those who are wondering what his faith has to do with breast cancer, the answer is a genetic mutation in Jewish women whose family tree roots reach back to Europe. Such women have a much higher breast cancer risk than other women due two little genes. The job of the genes, known as BRCA1 and BRCA2, is to suppress tumors.
"There was a time when it seemed as if I was hearing from friends and acquaintances from all over the country, Jewish women who had been diagnosed with breast cancer," Richelson says.
This month, the Jewish Cultural Center in Chattanooga offered free genetic testing and 17 people ranging in age from their 20s to their 70s came, including Richelson's wife, who is not Jewish. The couple wanted their children to have as much information about their genetic inheritance as possible.
"I went without hesitation," Richelson says. "I have biological as well as adopted adult children who may need my genetic history to help them make decisions about health and family planning."
Ann Treadwell, program director at the Jewish center, says the test was essentially a swab from inside the mouth "to collect material from each individual to be tested in the lab."
Richelson and his wife, Lynn Howard, will have to wait a few weeks to get the results. The Michigan-based laboratory NxGen MDx did the screening and will conduct the genetic tests. Richelson and Howard will find out if they are carrying the gene mutations that afflict Ashkenazi Jews, who hail from Eastern Europe, at a higher rate than the general population. The gene mutations can be handed down by either parent, father or mother.
About one in 40 Ashkenazi Jews are carriers compared to the odds of one in 500 carriers within the general population, according to the Center for Jewish Genetics in Chicago.
The center tracks statistic on diseases such as Tay-Sachs, which attacks infants' motor and developmental skills, cystic fibrosis, a lung and digestive system disorder, and Gaucher Disease Type 1, which attacks the bones, liver and spleen - all diseases that afflict Ashkenazi Jews more often than the general population. Chattanoogans who took the free genetic testing offer for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes also were screened for these diseases.
"There is no change a person can make in their environment, behavior or nutrition that can change their genetic makeup," says genetic counselor Amber Volk from the Center for Jewish Genetics. She attended the testing day in Chattanooga to help attendees who wanted more information or were dreading the bad news a test might reveal.
"I tell people they have no reason to feel guilty if they are carriers of a gene that increases the risk of a disease," she says. "You have absolutely no control over what genes life gives you."
Volk advises young couples who might be carrying a disease-related gene on ways in which they can avoid passing the danger along to their children.
"They can use an egg donor in some cases," she says. "Their embryos can be tested for the disease-related genes and those embryos without those genes can be used for in vitro fertilization."
Although some conservative Christian denominations object to genetic testing of embryos for any reason, Reform Judaism does not share find a biblical prohibition that would be relevant to this application of modern science.
"Having taught Jewish ethics, I cannot think of anything that would prohibit testing embryos and egg donation," says Rabbi Susan Tendler, who leads Chattanooga's B'nai Zion Congregation.
Rabbi Bill Tepper, of Chattanooga's historic Mizpah Congregation, now celebrating its 150th year, says rabbis in Reform Judaism agree there is no scriptural prohibition to testing embryos or any of the other options Volk mentions. To back up his point, he refers to a statement issued by the Central Conference of American Rabbis.
"(This is) the professional association of Reform Rabbis', to which I belong, 'response' to the question of in vitro fertilization," Tepper says. "It opens with the view that procreation is 'mitzvah' (literally meaning 'commandment') and then closes in support of IVF. But please remember that this is the Reform Jewish view; the more-traditional persuasions of Judaism – Conservative and Orthodoxy – may have different opinions."
The Central Conference's statement was issued last year and is titled "In Vitro Fertilization and the Mitzvah of Childbearing." It notes that, for centuries, the best and only therapy for childlessness was to tell a couple to pray.
"Since then, much has changed," says the statement. "Where healing was once effected primarily by means of prayer, Jewish tradition has for many centuries accepted the practice of medicine ('refu'ah') as the correct therapy, the right response to disease.
"Medicine, our sources tell us, is a mitzvah; it is the way in which we most often fulfill our obligation to save life ('pikuach nefesh'). While it is surely a good thing to ask God's blessings upon those who are ill - and we do so in our liturgy - prayer is no longer sufficient therapy when we are ill, we must avail ourselves of the remedies devised through human wisdom and scientific knowledge and not place our exclusive reliance upon the hope that God will intervene into the workings of nature."
Volk says it also is important to know the terms of a patient's health insurance policy before the screening is done. The Genetics Information Non-Discrimination Act of 2003 prohibits health insurance providers from denying coverage or increasing the cost to a person based on data from genetic screening and also prohibits an employer from discriminating against a worker based on genetic data, Volk says. But it does not prevent the insurer or employer from denying disability or long-term care to a worker based on genetic screening.
Richelson describes himself as "retired professionally while being engaged civically" and does not need to worry about insurance at this point in life.
"Lynn and I have absolutely no regrets about getting the testing done," he says. "Now we're looking forward to seeing the results."
Contact Lynda Edwards at ledwards@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6391. Contact Lynda Edwards at ledwards@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6391.