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You Have a 50/50 Chance of Passing a Cancer Gene to Your Child. What Would You Do?
Genetic testing can catch markers of disease before they’re transmitted to future generations — presenting some would-be parents with a difficult choice.
Caitlin Michelle is four months’ pregnant, and although she doesn’t know the sex of her baby yet, she says she thinks about it every day. Michelle is positive for BRCA, the so-called breast cancer gene, and there is a 50% chance she’ll pass it on — a serious risk if she gives birth to a girl.
“If I have a daughter,” she says, “I will probably think about it every day of her life.”
Michelle, a 32-year-old public health practitioner in Illinois, only learned she was BRCA-positive last year. The news upended her life plans to eventually have more children once she and her partner finished their doctoral programs and completed a cross-country move. Carriers of the BRCA variant often choose to have a preventative mastectomy and oophorectomy (removal of the ovaries) to decrease their chances of developing breast and ovarian cancers. The latter procedure eliminates the possibility of becoming pregnant. With BRCA, says Michelle, “our timeline for more kids suddenly moved up.”
