"Never Mind": A Link Between Enlisting Gilda Radner in Challenging Guidelines for Screening Heart Patients for Depression and Saving Women's Lives with Genetic Testing
The Saturday Night Live star could have been saved from dying from ovarian cancer if she had been tested for the BRCA breast cancer gene.
This odd but powerful connection starts with my writing group channeling Gilda Radner’s Saturday Night Live character Emily Litella in a commentary we published in the Journal of the American Academy of Cardiology in 2009. This was noted in a Facebook note from 2009.
I recalled what I later read about Gilda’s death from ovarian cancer. Experts noted how she carried a faulty BRCA gene, which conveys a high risk of both breast and ovarian cancer. If she had received genetic testing for the breast cancer gene, she could have had a prophylactic oophorectomy that would have reduced her risk of ovarian cancer by 96%.
In 2023, 97% of women carrying a faulty variant of the BRCA gene do not know it and fail to take preventive measures for themselves. They also cannot inform their daughters who have a 50% risk of carrying a faulty gene variant. Knowing their risk would allow the daughters to plan to have children early and then have their ovaries removed. Or they could freeze their eggs and …