Pedro Gomez is a short, powerfully built man in his 60s with the ruddy face and sun-tanned arms of an outdoor worker. He is wearing a short-sleeved black shirt, jeans and a baseball cap. Gomez is worried about a small lump on his finger, he tells the doctor, cancer geneticist Maria Isabel Achatz. Taking his hand in hers to get a closer look, Achatz talks to him gently then leans forward to inspect another small lesion behind his ear.<\/p>\n
Gomez is one of Achatz\u2019s regular patients at the A C Camargo Cancer Center in S\u00e3o Paulo, Brazil. He is extraordinarily susceptible to cancer. So too are many members of his extended family; cancer is so common among them \u2013 and premature death so painfully familiar \u2013 that until they learned very recently of the cause, some believed their family was cursed.<\/p>\n
Gomez\u2019s is not the only family affected. The \u2018curse\u2019 afflicts hundreds of thousands of people in Brazil. One of the highest-profile was Jos\u00e9 Alencar, the country\u2019s popular and charismatic Vice President under Lu\u00edz Ign\u00e1cio \u2018Lula\u2019 da Silva. Alencar died in 2011 after being diagnosed with cancer in 1997. Over the years, as tumours spread relentlessly throughout his body, he underwent more and more operations in Brazil and the USA, having a kidney, most of his stomach and large chunks of his bowel removed. The Vice President talked candidly about his disease and used his own experience to advocate for early detection of cancer.<\/p>\n