Ange lInA Jo lIe mA de me do It. My practical efforts to learn whether I had any unknown genetic health risks began in earnest when Jolie had those magnificent, world-famous breasts surgically removed. Since she’s one of the most famous actresses in the world and has been called “the most beautiful woman in the world” many times over, you probably know the story: Jolie, a mother of six, had a double mastectomy to prevent developing breast cancer. She also plans to have her ovaries removed in order to prevent developing the same kind of cancer that killed her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, in 2007, at the age of 56. Jolie’s aunt, Bertrand’s sister, Debbie Martin, died of breast cancer just a few weeks after Jolie’s surgery. While I find her decision nothing short of heroic, it also made a certain amount of rational sense. By some measures, the actress had an 87 percent risk of developing breast cancer and a 50 percent chance of ovarian cancer because of genetic variations, the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, that ran in her family. Her mother and aunt had the same mutation. (Health officials quickly noted that these risk probabilities do not apply to most of the population.) I crapped out on the genetic dice roll as well. My mom died young of a brain aneurysm, after having lived a wholly laudable life, never having smoked a cigarette, gotten drunk or even said the ‘F’ word. My dad, on the other hand, smoked for years, drank more than was good for him, had heart attacks, strokes and diabetes. He’s 80 now. His brother, Leonard, a Catholic priest, died at 47 of a massive heart attack. I guess I don’t need to say my lifestyle choices have more aligned with my dad’s than my mom’s, and at 51, I’ve already had to face issues of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. I’d like to say this is proof of the old adage “only the good die young,” and somehow I’ve been inoculated against early death, but I’ve known far more hedonists who died without wrinkles than I have saints. But the threat of an aneurysm, heart attack or diabetes didn’t hold a candle to my greatest health fear: Alzheimer’s. I’ve said many times that my right not to have my family suffer through my death by Alzheimer’s is a fundamental human right, and I’d blow my brains out long before I put them through that. How’s that for a happy thought: Lingering death by Alzheimer’s or the family ordeal of a suicide? But Angelina Jolie was not my introduction to this concept of testing for genetic medical issues. She was just the catalyst. Tanja Poley, human resources manager for this company, had put the seed in my mind months earlier. She’s the adoptive mother of two Chinese children. A late onset Type 1 diabetic, she was very concerned about the lack of information regarding her children’s family medical history. She had the analysis performed on herself through an outfit called 23andme, but after having the analysis, decided against having her children tested.
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D. Brian Burghart b ri a nb @ ne w s re v i e w . c o m
t A WH
U o Y ARe
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23andwe This individual genetic analysis is a fairly new science called personal genomics. Since I’m a cheapskate, I went with 23andme to do my analysis, mainly because it was the cheapest and biggest at the time, due to a multimillion dollar grant from Google, which brought the price down to $99. But there are other companies that do genetic analysis (see sidebar), although they generally cost at least as much, and focus on different kinds of information. It’s a simple process. Just go to www.23andme.com and order a kit. The kit took 10 days to arrive at my house. It’s basically a box with a tube in it, instructions and a mail-back envelope. After not eating, smoking or using alcohol for a half-hour or so, you spit about a half-teaspoon of saliva into
Ine x p e n s iv e g e n e t ic t es t i ng f or hea l t h i s s ues r a i se s m o r al an d e t h ica l ques t i ons but provi des few a n s we r s
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AUGUST 22 , 2013
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