> It turns out that she has
>received not two, but three separate opinions from three separate doctors;
>one a breast specialist in London....  The second opinion
>was from her GP who advised having the bilateral mastectomy and a tubal
>ligation all at once (to save time). The third was from her children's paed.

Pam, the GP and Paed. are most likely not experts in familial breast
cancer! As a GP myself, I wouldn't give advice on something like this,
unless I was an expert in that area.
>
>Three female
>members of her family have had breast cancer - her mother's sister in her
>30s who died, her grandmother over the age of 60 who has survived, and her
>own mother, also over the age of 60, also still alive.

In familial breast cancer, affected women are usually younger than 50. So,
although this woman is at an increased risk of breast cancer, this may not
be a family with a breast cancer gene. In Australia, there are now family
breast cancer clinics in capital cities, where women can get expert advice
- I don't know what the situation would be in Africa. The Australian
National Breast Cancer Centre has a home page:
http://www.nbcc.org.au/default.htm (one of the articles I found is at
http://www.nbcc.org.au/pages/brnews/spr95.htm#genetic).
Lisa Amir
GP / IBCLC in Melbourne, Australia
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