BRCA1 screening in a woman with breast cancer: a patient's perspective with commentary.

Genetic screening for breast cancer and other diseases poses major personal and psychological challenges for persons facing the prospect of testing. The personal report of those dilemmas by a woman considering BRCA1 screening who had had a lumpectomy for breast cancer and whose mother had died from that disease is presented here. Commentaries by a bioethicist and a genetics counselor show further complexities in the testing experience which persons considering testing and those providing them will need to confront.