Dr. Mary-Claire King

It was that kind of conversation many times.

And they would talk to me, and they would talk to me because Dr. Patrakos had facilitated introductions.

Probably the most important one was he introduced me to Mary Lasker.

And once you know Mary Lasker, you know everyone in cancer biology.

And she also, I mean, the main thing she said to me was, this is an important problem.

Don't get distracted.

I said, yes, ma'am.

to take seriously the viewpoints of people from very different perspectives and to be taken seriously by them.

I think equally important to friendship is respect.

One thing about working with breast cancer is obviously every woman is vulnerable, whether she has an inherited mutation or not.

And it's enabled me to meet women from every imaginable background.

And we respect each other.

We understand that we all are there for the same reason.

And if we could build that respect into all the steps of scientific discovery,

It's not the same as lacking criticism.

It's understanding that criticism of an idea is the greatest form of respect because it means you're taking the person seriously.

We just need to build that in more and more and more and people not be sensitive to being criticized because the criticism is meant as respect.

Let me not jump ahead that far.

Okay.

But take your first statement about genetic testing for BRCA1.