B.C. initiative aims to expand genetic screening for Ashkenazi Jewish people at risk of hereditary cancers

The final gift Catriona Remocker’s father gave her was discovered by a lab in a vial of his blood.

Dr. Geoffrey Remocker died of Stage IV prostate cancer in 2016, just two weeks after testing confirmed he was a carrier for genetic mutations that increase the likelihood of developing ovarian, breast, prostate and pancreatic cancers.

These hereditary BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations are ten times more common among both men and women of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, like Remocker and her father, than non-Jewish people.

About one in 40 individuals with Ashkenazi heritage carry the mutations, according to the U.S. Centre for Disease Control, which increase