Hereditary cancer gene hunting. a phase of declining success?

For many opinion leaders "The genetic revolution in medicine is under way" and this "revolution" is often characterized as occurring within a time frame of a few years. We challenged this optimistic view looking at the trend for predisposing cancer gene discovery. With regard to Hereditary Cancer almost 60 genes are described. Using electronic databases we looked for the year of discovery for these genes. It appears that far from a steady increase in identification of new cancer susceptibility genes, we observed two peaks, a small one around the mid eighties and the main one around the mid-late nineties. Since the year 2001 only three genes have been identified. With respect to this data, we might expect that the next (few?) genes that will be discovered will have lower allele frequency, less induced relative risk or both, leading to a very small attributable risk. Therefore improving public health still and will need environmental risk awareness.