When it’s working, p53 acts as a tumor suppressor, stamping out malignancies before they can grow and spread. This gene is so important that one scientist called it the “guardian of the genome.” People with the mutation, which causes an extremely rare disorder called Li-Fraumeni Syndrome, have a defective p53 gene, which means no brakes on tumors flourishing in their bodies. Families with this syndrome often lose a cascade of loved ones to breast cancer, lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, and more.
Lawrence Ingrassia hails from one of these families. He was spared the p53 mutation, but he lost his mother, two sisters, his brother, and a nephew to various cancers. Ingrassia, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist formerly with The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, decided to chronicle his family story as well as explore the discovery of Li-Fraumeni Syndrome and cancer research in general. The result is “A Fatal Inheritance: How A Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery,” a braided narrative in which Ingrassia charts the loss of his family as well as the tale of the scientists who turned cancer from an obscure yet burgeoning public health issue into one of the most-studied diseases of our time.
At its heart, the book creates a tense frisson as it chronicles a series of massive scientific breakthroughs, none of which successfully saved Ingrassia’s family or the other families in this narrative. Ingrassia describes it aptly when he writes, “The story of Li-Fraumeni Syndrome and, more broadly, of cancer research isn’t one story, but two. It is both a heartbreaking story of family loss and an inspiring story of human achievement.”
