In the Genes

Claire Forrester interviews a 22-year-old defender for Birtley Town Ladies in the North East Women’s Regional League, described as little, quick and ferocious in the tackle, and the youngest of a football-mad family. Chelsea Easton has recently learned she carries the gene that raises her risk of breast cancer. Her mother had the disease when Easton was six, and she later learned that her nana and aunts had it too, two of them dying young. She was tested only because her sister wanted to be, and says she does not regret it: her sister is clear, and knowing means she has options her relatives never had, and has made her check herself. She expects to have surgery, which would cut her risk from around seventy or eighty per cent to under ten.