The genetic markers BRCA1 and BRCA2 indicate an increased likelihood of developing breast cancer. A recent study shows that children with these genetic markers will develop breast or ovarian cancer much earlier than their cancer prone parents did.
The research was done at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The doctors were able to pair 106 women with BRCA-positive cancer with a family member in the previous generation who was also diagnosed with a BRCA-related breast or ovarian cancer at some time in their lives.
The average age of cancer diagnosis in the parents was 48 years but was only 42 years in the children. Using a mathematical predictive model it was estimated that the drop in expected age at onset of cancer for everyone in the study was 7.9 years.
What will this mean for the children of the next generation? Will cancer keep occurring at a younger and younger age? Will screening tests need to be done at ever earlier ages? Is our genetic make-up deteriorating over time?
This study indicates that the humans are deteriorating over time. Paul recognize this in his own day when he wrote. “These tents we now live in are like a heavy burden, and we groan. But we don’t do this just because we want to leave these bodies that will die. It is because we want to change them for bodies that will never die.” 2 Corinthians 5:4
Ellen G. White a 19th century health reformer predicted this continuing deterioration of health. She wrote, “The days of man would be shortened by his own course of sin; he would deteriorate in physical stature and endurance and in moral and intellectual power, until the world would be filled with misery of every type.” Patriarchs and Prophets, 67.