Breaking Ranks, Lab Offers Test To Assess Risk of Breast Cancer
Dr. Schulman also said that despite the qualms of some geneticists who express doubts about whether prophylactic, or preventive, mastectomies reduce the cancer risk, "there isn't a single rational person in the world who really believes that."

"What's indefensible to me is not to give people a choice," he added. "There are fantastic numbers of people who want to know." One of them is his wife, Dixie, a scientist who works at the institute. She is Jewish, and her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother all had breast cancer. She wanted to know whether she had the BRCA1 mutation but found nobody who was offering a test outside a research protocol, she said.

Independently of his wife's situation, Dr. Schulman and his colleagues at the institute decided to offer BRCA1 testing to Jewish women earlier this month. They began by offering it to women at the institute and to Mrs. Schulman's mother. Almost all said they wanted the test, and of the 16 women tested, 2 had the mutated gene: Mrs. Schulman and her mother.

Mrs. Schulman, who is 38, said she had not really been surprised to learn she had the mutated gene. Her family history of breast cancer is so strong that her doctor had advised her at age 18 to have both breasts removed prophylactically. She refused then, she said, but she is going to do that now. She also said she was likely to have her ovaries removed before she reached menopause.

"Now I know what my alternatives are," Mrs. Schulman said.

Dr. Schulman added, "We thank God we have this test result."

Dr. Schulman has supporters. "You can't hold back advances because you want everybody not to feel emotionally upset," said Dr. Christine Berg, director of breast radiation therapy at the Vincent Lombardi Cancer Center at Georgetown University. "I think that saying you're not going to do the testing is very restricting and patronizing."

Dr. Berg added that the situation with the BRCA1 test contrasted sharply with how a nongenetic blood test for prostate-specific antigen, a marker for prostate cancer in men, had been handled, even though it has perhaps more drawbacks and uncertainties than the BRCA1 test.

The P.S.A. test can detect tiny prostate cancers, but no one can say whether a man's tiny tumor will become life-threatening. To play it safe, most men with such tumors have their prostates removed, a treatment that doctors hope will protect the men but that has never been proved to be effective. Most men who have their prostates removed end up impotent and incontinent.

Yet, Dr. Berg said, "the urology community has embraced the P.S.A. test wholesale."

In contrast, the researchers who agreed not to test for the BRCA1 gene say they are outraged that the test is being offered at Dr. Schulman's institute. Dr. Michael M. Kaback, a geneticist at the University of California in San Diego, said: "Schulman is an entrepreneur. He masks it in all this talk about giving people the right to make their own decision, and he's convinced himself that he's doing the right thing, that people have to have this information. Fine, but 'first, do no harm.' The conflict is, every time he runs a test, he generates profits."

Dr. Kaback and others say that if the test is used inappropriately, it could cause fear in the face of uncertainty and create problems with insurance or even employability.

"It's clearly premature to be jumping on this thing," Dr. Kaback said. "Just because a test exists doesn't mean that everybody has to know about it and have, quote unquote, informed choice."

Dr. Holtzman said he did not know what steps geneticists could take.

"We have a number of options," Dr. Holtzman said. "One is to state the principles. Obviously, that's not enough. Another is an industry code. Well, here are people like the Genetics and I.V.F. Institute who may ignore it. Then there are professional guidelines. Well, we've got professional guidelines, and they're not working." That leaves the Food and Drug Administration, he added, which has declined to regulate individual laboratories that are marketing services like genetic tests.

Photo: Despite criticism from some geneticists, Dr. Joseph D. Schulman is offering a test to detect a gene that indicates a high risk of breast cancer. (Marty Katz for The New York Times) (pg. A15)
Please write a summary below.
In the small world of geneticists in the forefront of studying human disease, the researchers tend to know one another. So last year, after the discovery that as many as 1 percent of Jewish women carry a mutated form of a gene that might predispose them to breast and ovarian cancer, it was easy enough for leading scientists and two major commercial testing labs to agree informally not to offer the test to the general public.         The reasoning was that many questions remained about the risk posed by the gene, about what, if anything, could be done to lessen the risk and about whether widespread testing would do more harm than good.
Pelicans vie for NBA MVP votes for Anthony Davis with a terrifying, unibrowed doll
Campaign season is in full swing and not just for Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and other presidential hopefuls. It’s also that time of year when NBA teams attempt to woo select media members to vote for their team’s candidate in the 2015 NBA MVP race. They don’t go knocking on reporters’ doors, though. Instead they send them ridiculous swag, you know, like this terrifying stuffed Anthony Davis doll, courtesy of the New Orleans Pelicans.

It’s unclear if the doll worked its magic on New York Post writer Marc Berman, who says he already decided on his No. 1 player of the season, but it definitely did not work for SBNation’s Rodger Sherman, who asked, “What is it with the Pelicans and Things That Hypothetically Are Meant For Kids But Actually Might Give Kids Nightmares?”

Sherman, of course, is referring to New Orleans mascots Pierre the Pelican and the King Cake Baby, both of which seem more suited to star in a horror movie than a family-friendly event.

In fairness to the Pelicans in this case, however, the Davis doll isn’t actually meant for kids, but for adults, which almost makes it even weirder.

Alas, no Washington Post reporter will be getting his or her own nightmarish Davis doll. Under company policy, Post reporters don’t vote for end-of-season awards.

Marissa Payne writes for The Early Lead, a fast-breaking sports blog, where she focuses on what she calls the “cultural anthropological” side of sports, aka “mostly the fun stuff.” She is also an avid WWE fan.
Please write a summary below.

Show your work and conclude with the exact phrasing "Therefore, the final answer is [answer]." where [answer] is just the final number or expression that solves the problem.
user
This is up there with the scariness that is New Orleans mascots Pierre the Pelican and King Cake Baby.