Family curse

Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.

Josie has to decide whether she wants to know if she's likely to get breast cancer

Gene dilemma in cancer battle'It was definitely a good thing to do'Women 'miss father health clues' A teenage girl whose family has "been cursed" by hereditary breast cancer for generations faces a dilemma - should she be tested for a mutated gene which could cause the disease?

"It's not so much that I'm scared to get the test, or I'm scared for the operation," said Josie Bellerby, an 18-year old from York.

"It's a decision. If you go and get the test done you can never take it back, so it's just whether or not you want to risk feeling like part of your body might kill you."

Josie comes from a family where breast cancer has claimed the lives of her grandmother and great-great-grandmother. Her mother, Julia, had a preventative double mastectomy when she was younger after she found out she had an increased risk of cancer.

Josie has two sisters, Lucy and Emma, and the possibility that any of their daughters has a faulty gene has been difficult for parents Julia and Jules.

“Start QuoteI could not bear to lose a daughter to cancer”

End QuoteJulia BellerbyJosie's mother Julia said: "I lost my mum to cancer, I could not bear to lose a daughter to cancer. That just doesn't feel like something I could cope with at all.

"It just makes me sad because it is all becoming kind of real now. This thing that I so dreaded when I went through it myself, that you'd all have to face it and here it is, it is actually happening."

"They shouldn't have to be thinking of things like breast cancer, at their age," said Jules.

Josie wants to go drama college next year, but fears that if she has the test, the results might affect her plans.

"I never thought about the future. The furthest in the future I thought about was when is my next audition or, when are my exams coming up?