The Italian supermodel Bianca Balti recently announced she is  battling against ovarian cancer. Her story should raise a debate about how we manage and, more importantly, communicate with patients who carry BRCA1 mutations.

As a molecular biologist and science communicator, I’ve encountered these genetic predispositions frequently in my work and written about them in my books. These rare DNA mutations account for only a small fraction of all cancer cases but dramatically increase the risk of ...