Colon cancer arrival in the U.S. traced back almost 400 years ago

It sounds like some kind of medically-odd fairly tale: Mr. and Mrs. George Fry sailed the William & Mary to the New World (the U.S.) back in 1630 only to bring a mutated gene that causes colon cancer.

But that is exactly what University of Utah researchers are saying based on research they have performed into the national origins of colon cancer in the U.S. In fact, researchers say that two of the Fry's children also carried the genetic mutation as well. As a result, the "founder mutation" for the current forms of colon cancer in the U.S. has now been passed on to a considerable number of the descendants of the original couple.

Sounds like the standard travels of any ordinary virus: all it takes is a single individual to pass a condition along from one people or continent to the next, ala Outbreak or something, although Dr. Albert de la Chapelle says that "it is usually a matter of chance whether such a mutation becomes more and more widespread with time, or whether it disappears. This phenomenon is called genetic drift. In this case, the mutation appears to have spread but perhaps not excessively so."