--- Wojtek wrote:
> PS. I also heard that while breast cancer is very rare among
> Japanese
> women in Japan, it is much higher among those of them who live in
> the
> US. Genetics or the US lifestyles?
I'd include overall environmental factors that certainly include lifestyle, e.g., sedentary practices and diet, but also exposure to pollutants and toxins in just about every aspect of living.
Exposures plus lifestyle could also explain why, genetically, you may see obesity in an American cousin and not see obesity in his European cousin, little breast cancer in one Japanese sister living in Japan and malignancy in her sister in America. The genetic makeup may be the same for both, i.e., a predisposition to becoming obese or develop cancer if the body is assaulted with X, Y and Z on a given day under certain circumstances, just that one was "exposed" and one was not.
I'm always highly suspicious of any researcher or erstwhile authority who claims that something is *always* a genetic given; those cases are the few, not the many.
- Deborah