How can Cancer be Hereditary?

Cancer is when the cells in your body begin to grow out of control and become abnormal and large. Then they can go through metastasis and hit other parts of your body. Isn't this usually due to just getting older and damaging of the DNA?

Say a person is perfectly healthy when they have a child. The parent gets older and develops cancer. Is the child more likely to also get cancer than another person who has no history of it? How can someone inherit damaged DNA if the parents were in fact healthy during the pregnacy? I'm really confused on this one.

Lets say you have cancer in your skin your children can not inherit that damaged DNA. The only DNA they inherit is the DNA in your reproductive cells (eggs and sperm) so if the DNA in your reproductive cells are damaged then your child can get cancer or down syndrome or not even survive untill birth. Your children do not inherit any illness you have unless the genes for that illness is in your reproductive cells.

You can inherit a tendency to get a particular cancer, but you won't definitely get that cancer.

Scientists have identified some high risk faulty genes but these are rare in the general population. One example of a high risk gene is BRCA1. Women who carry a faulty BRCA1 gene have an 80% chance of getting breast cancer at some point in their lives - but this still means that one in five of women with the gene will not get breast cancer. (Only 5 鈥?10 % of breast cancer cases are caused by hereditary factors)

Doctors who specialise in this area think that the younger you are when a cancer occurs, the more likely it is that an inherited genetic tendency has played a part

Some cancers are not hereditary at all 鈥?bone cancer is one.

You may find this link helpful

http://www.cancerhelp.org.uk/help/defaul...

They say you have more chance of getting the cells going out of control if your parents had cancer. Some like breast cancer are proven to run in families and if your family has a history of it which you may like to address

Well I was 12, when I was first diagnosed with cancer.. Astrocytoma (Head tumour which spread to my lower back).

At that time no one, on either side of my family, had cancer. After 17 years the darn thing came back and again was asked if anyone had cancer in my family. This time my grandmother had just started her breast cancer treatment.

It seems they're still gathering information on wether or not it is hereditary since when I asked if it was they didn't say anything conclusive.

I often ask myself that question as I'm juggling with the idea if yes or no I'd like a child. All this to say.. sorry I don't know lol.

Statistics (and statistics only) have shown that specific types of cancer appear to be hereditary. If your family has a history of a particular type of cancer the chance of you getting that type will be greater than the average. Since the probability of a person getting cancer is low in the first place a nominally increase in probability is not something to be afraid of but only something to be aware of. After all cancer can be beaten if detected early.

It is believed that most鈥?perhaps 90%鈥攐f all cancers are sporadic. This means even if cancer does not run in a family, a family member can still be at risk for some type of cancer in his or her lifetime. Most cancer is not due to inherited mutations. About 10-15% of cancers are hereditary, depending on the type of cancer.