Come on, something's wrong here. You don't just cut off your breasts. What aren't we finding out? Did she always hate her breasts? What size were they? Were they dramatically uneven? Bad reporting.

This is surgically correcting a genetic defect so that she can continue to live a healthy, productive life, and THEN take life as it comes, including the possibilities of other cancers or heart disease or diabetes or whatever.

This is a technical point, but it's not really correcting a genetic defect — it's compensating for it. By the time Jessica Queller's children are her age, corrective genetic engineering will be commonplace and surgery will be a blessedly unnecessary option.

Don't ask me how it will work — if I knew I would be learning to say, "Thank you, Your Excellency," in Swedish, and practicing my Nobel acceptance speech. But it's clear that it will come.

In the meantime, good for Jessica Queller for empowering herself with knowledge. I can't imagine people insisting that genetic testing isn't real.

That "cutting off my breasts" phrasing was bothering me, too. It feels manipulative in the way it dramatizes the visceral goriness that exists, after all, in many other surgical procedures, as well. You both did a good job articulating what else is problematic about the description.

Somebody has to be heartless and say this. Does Queller seriously want to run a 50% risk of inflicting the horror she went through on a real live daughter, rather than screen a blastocyst, just because she feels for the little blob as a fellow carrier? The sleepless nights, the impossible decisions, the forced rebuilding of her body image and her sense of where she fits in the universe would be bad enough. But worse, Queller has no way to know that the girl will be lucky enough to get the operation alone and not full-blown cancer. Not everyone has the money for surgery. Not everyone will work up the strength to face a choice that will present itself to their darkest imaginations as "My womanhood or my life?" in time to head off the worst. After all, Queller herself says there's no telling when the cancer will strike.

Please don't think I mean that any BRCA carrier alive now should have been aborted; they're the only people who can decide what their lives turned out to be worth. But it's quite another thing to create suffering where none ever had to be. To do it out of compassion...I have no words.

...is sugar. Sugar is a drug, and in the quantities that the average American consumes is incredibly toxic and cancer-causing. Breast and colon cancer rates are lower or non-existant in societies that don't consume sugar. Same with heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, Alzheimers/dementia, anorexia/bulimia, appendicitis, ADD, cavities and so on.

For people with genetic susceptibility to cancer, heart disease, or diabetes, they should do everything in their power to stop eating sugar if they value their long-term health.

I am sitting here recuperating from my final reconstructive surgery following my second mastectomy - I am 53. Jessica's story is all too familiar to me. I know way too many women who have had to make her decision. The BRCA mutation is quite scary and all that I know who have this mutation (I do not - just had breast cancer in both of my breasts 7 years apart) have made the same decision. Jessica is quite lucky that the test now exists. Yes, to some Jessica's choice might seem extreme, but an 87% probability of contracting what is almost always a virulent form of the disease is reason enough. My best wishes to Jessica for continued good health!

Four years ago when I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at age 44, my sister got me a boxed set of the first season of Gilmore Girls to watch while I was recuperating from surgery and awaitig the onslaught of chemo.

And after surgery, when I found out that I had not just ovarian cancer but as an extra added bonus endometrial (uterine) cancer as well, watching the Loralei and Rory and Luke helped quell the horror bit.

So after the chemo and the radiation, I finally ventured into the land of genetic testing, wondering how I could manage to deal with yet another surgery and lose my breasts, but also knowing the horror of cancer, how I could not.

Luckily, I tested negative. And luckily I have not recurred (ovarian cancer has an 80 percent recurrence rate). And I'm so glad Queller has told her story.

You also might want to check out Jessica's website for more about the book. There are also some great links to BRCA and Breast Cancer websites. Go to: http://www.jessicaqueller.com

Colon cancer is easily detectable in early stages by tests, and if your parent had it at a young age, it's very worthwhile to get tested frequently. You don't have to cut it out.

This woman has a particular type of gene that almost guarantees she'll get breast or ovarian cancer (there are different kinds of breast and ovarian cancer, by the way). It's almost like having Huntington's. If you had the Huntington's gene and there was something you could surgically remove to prevent the onset of the disease, you'd probably do it.

And I don't get anyone who says, "don't get your breasts removed because you have a lower chance of getting other kinds of breast cancer" or "take your chances". She has 90% chance of getting the cancer her mother got! Ninety percent. Very specific, very lethal cancer. I don't think people who say these things understand either genetics or cancer. This isn't like living underground in case a meteor hits. This is surgically correcting a genetic defect so that she can continue to live a healthy, productive life, and THEN take life as it comes, including the possibilities of other cancers or heart disease or diabetes or whatever.

It's a difficult choice to have to make, but if I were in her position, I'd do the same thing. Good for her.