“Your skin color or ethnic background won’t
protect you from breast cancer. We’re proof of
that. Breast cancer doesn’t discriminate.”
—GRACE TALUSAN, AGE 37 (SISTER OF MARY
TALUSAN LACANLALE, AGE 40, AND LIZA TALUSAN,
AGE 34, ALL FROM THE BOSTON AREA)
“Dy mother always said that I should learn from y big sister Mary’s experiences,” says Grace Talusan. This advice took on new urgency in 2006 when
Mary was diagnosed with breast cancer just nine months after giving birth
to her first child. Because Mary was
only 36, doctors suspected and confirmed a hereditary mutation. “No
one in my family had heard of a
cancer gene,” says Grace, even
though her dad’s mother, as well as
some aunts and cousins, had bat-
tled breast and ovarian cancers.
It’s common for breast cancer risk to
be underestimated in Asian-Americans
like the Talusans, who are Filipino. According to a recent study, computer
models designed to identify those at risk
for hereditary breast cancer fail to predict mutations in almost half of Asian
women who have them. At the same
time, the number of Asian-Americans
developing breast cancer is climbing.
At first Grace resisted testing. “I was
in denial,” she says. Even when she finally gave in to her family’s pleas, Grace
