A cancer diagnosis is devastating for any patient, but it's even more crushing when it's a child that has the disease. A doctor in New Mexico, a top cancer expert, found that Hispanic and Native American children had a zero survival rate when treated with standard chemotherapy. She compared that rate to white children treated with the same protocol and realized that white children were surviving at much higher rates.
This led to research that showed Hispanic and Native American children had a different genetic mutation than white children. These differences were responsible for the failure of the standard chemo course of treatment. As turns out, not all cancers are created equal and ethnicity matters in finding effective treatment. Genetic sequencing can tailor treatments specifically to one person, making them much more likely to survive