Greg Derr/The Patriot Ledger

Cancer is a way of life for Weymouth family with thyroid carcinoma gene

Members of the dependents of Lars and Anna Jacobson, who moved to the U.S. 100 years ago, will gather for a reunion in Weymouth this weekend. Many of the family members suffer from a hereditary form of cancer, medullary thyroid cancer. From left are Denise Smith, Don Jacobson and Erik Jacobson.

By Allison Manning

It’s been 40 years since the Jacobson family has had a proper reunion. The last, in 1970, was when a doctor sat down with about 60 family members at Weymouth’s grange hall to tell them he knew why so many of them were developing cancer and dying in their 50s and 60s. They had medullary thyroid carcinoma, a hereditary form of cancer. The family, now numbering more than 300, will gather Sunday at the Weymouth Elks hall for another reunion, joined by the doctors and social workers who helped identify the disease that was killing them.

They had medullary thyroid carcinoma, a hereditary form of cancer. Instead of greeting the news with alarm, family members were relieved; finally, they knew what was wrong with them.

“You’d probably expect us to be upset, but the beginning of the story is, people were dying and things were wrong. So when we found out somebody knew something about it, that’s a good deal to us,” said Denise Smith, who was only a year old when the family last gathered. “Someone can help us.”

The family, now numbering more than 300, will gather Sunday at the Weymouth Elks hall for another reunion, joined by the doctors and social workers who helped identify the disease that was killing them.

“I didn’t want to turn it into a cancer reunion,” said Erik Jacobson, 51, of Rockland, who is organizing Sunday’s reunion, along with Smith. “We used to have yearly reunions. Then the cancer came up – all of a sudden (they) stopped.”

Don Jacobson of Weymouth, Erik Jacobson and Smith’s uncle, made an appointment with a doctor at Tufts Medical Center in late 1969, hoping to find an answer.

The doctor he wanted to see wasn’t there, so he tracked down Dr. Kenneth Melvin, interrupted the endocrinologist’s lunch and handed him a list of family members who had died of neck cancers.

“He said, ‘Hey doc, would you mind feeling the neck?’” Melvin said in a phone interview from his home in Oregon.

Melvin knew of a family in Sweden who suffered from similar thyroid cancers. He soon realized that Jacobson’s grandmother, Anna, was the missing sibling in that Swedish clan.

“It was really a miracle, speaking to that particular doctor,” Don Jacobson, 71, said.

The family met with Melvin at the Grange Hall in 1970, and the J-kindred study at Tufts was launched. Family members were tested, and 30 thyroids were removed that first year, becoming a standard of care.

“I was amazed at how interested they were and how motivated they became,” Melvin, 76, said. “It couldn’t have been possible if they didn’t have the motivation.”

The gene that carries the cancer was finally identified in 1993.

Cancer is a part of life for the Jacobsons. Today, the process for finding out whether a family member is a carrier of the medullary thyroid carcinoma gene is easier than the five days of hospital testing required when Don Jacobson – who turned out not to be a carrier – was tested 40 years ago.

Now, a blood test at birth tells doctors if an infant is a carrier.

“Now it’s just a blood test, it’s five minutes,” said Erik Jacobson, the first of his generation to have his thyroid removed.

Don Jacobson said he is grateful that the younger generation continues to be vigilant, and hopes the family reunion Sunday will remind relatives to get tested.

“There’s other generations that aren’t even born yet that are going to have it,” he said.