Fry Family's Inherited Cancer

When Mr. and Mrs. George Fry landed on the shores of Massachusetts not long after the Pilgrims, they carried with them a secret that remained hidden for nearly four centuries. Their genes harbored a quirk that would travel through 16 generations of Americans, leaving a legacy of colon cancer. Now a Utah scientist, herself a descendant of Mayflower voyagers and Benjamin Franklin, has discovered the Fry family history.

Working with both cancer records and genealogy records, researchers found a genetic mutation responsible for a rare form of colon cancer. Modern-day genetic fingerprinting identified far-flung relatives with this defect, and the team then traced the family tree back to Weymouth, Massachusetts. There, they found the Frys, who had decamped from their home in Somerset, England, sometime between 1624 and 1640, harboring hopes and the seeds of disease.

The discovery, detailed last week at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society, appears to be saving 21st-century lives. Physicians have tracked down distant relatives of the Frys and offered those who have the mutation testing for early signs of colon cancer and preventive treatment. The result: cases of the kind of colon cancer spawned by the mutation have nearly vanished in Utah.

You can read more at: http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2009/04/04/a_cancer_mutations_colonial_roots/.

Comments

[Dr W. J. (Liam) Martin]

The search should continue, and back in England. Has there been a study to deliniate the population with this APC gene mutation back in the UK?

[Lori English]

I find this so interesting. Coming from a French Canadian background that connect directly to one of the sisters thought to have passed on Oculopharyngeal Muscular Dystrophy I can tell you many doctors pay no heed to this kind of information. Two of my sisters have eyelids that hang down enough to interfere with their sight but it is just looked at as a cosmetic thing. Funny thing it that is isn't both eyes, just one. So far their throats have not shut down. Fingers crossed.
Thank goodness for these families that the APC gene was taken seriously.

[Rick Merrill]

How do we find out if we are descended from the Fry family?
Does the Mayflower society have more information on their descendants?

[The Revd. Anthony Fry]

Reference the Fry 'cancer inheritance' in the USA, maybe I can open up another area for debate/consideration. I live in the United Kingdom and I am from a branch of one of the English-based Frys. When my persistent abdominal pains were eventually diagnosed, after very any years, as a manifestation of Coeliac Disease (gluten allergy) the medical consultant to whom I was referred had interesting news about its possible root cause. He asked about my family background and then told me that I had almost certainly inherited this gluten allergy - and possibly the lactose intolerance that had also affected me as a child - from an Irish woman whom one of my forbears married generations earlier. He said some research (recent at that stage) indicated that many Coeliacs born in the United Kingdom could be traced back to this one lady's blood line ...from memory a lady called Mary Murphy (though I shall need to check this out when I next see my medical consultant.). Then, recently, when my eldest son became ill with chronic myeloid leukaemia, although he is being successfully treated with a drug called Glyvex, his consultant did a bone marrow check and found general matches in the Friesland area of Holland/North Germany from where we believe the Fries in the UK may have originated.