Army accepts recruit previously rejected over risk of inheriting breast cancer predisposition

The British Army has reversed its decision to reject a recruit over a cancer-risk gene, following media scrutiny.

Despite passing cognitive and fitness tests, 17-year-old Carys Holmes was initially denied entry to the British Army due to an extensive history of breast cancer in her family. Holmes' mother has a BRCA1 variant that increases cancer risk, which Holmes – who has not had a genetic test – has a 50 percent chance of having inherited. Around 65 to 85 percent of women with this gene variant will develop breast cancer in their lifetime, leading many carriers to opt for risk-reducing surgery.

'I was distraught, I was heartbroken', Holmes told ITV news, '[the Army] said that if in the future I would have to get preventative surgery, I would have to take time off, and that's something they didn't want to risk'.

Military law expert Emma Norton described the army's decision as an 'own goal' in an interview with the BBC: 'If the Army is operating a blanket policy of automatically excluding applications from all women who have a history of breast cancer in their family, that would appear, on the face of it, to be unlawful because it is discriminatory and may even amount to a human rights violation,' she said.

Holmes appealed the decision, citing an NHS genetic counsellor who stated that her risk of developing breast cancer before the age of 30 was 1.9 percent if she carried the cancer risk variant, compared to 0.1 percent if she did not.

The appeal was unsuccessful, however, hours after the BBC published an article about Holmes' case, the Army reversed the decision.

An Army statement said: 'Following a review of her case, it was concluded that she was wrongly told that she had been rejected as medically unfit', describing the decision to reject Holmes as 'a process mistake and not a policy of discrimination'.

The UK currently lacks legislation specifically prohibiting genetic discrimination in the workplace. While existing laws protect against disability discrimination, genetic predispositions might not always translate to a current disability. The government and insurance providers have a voluntary agreement to prevent genetic information from influencing insurance costs (see BioNews 1202). However, no such code applies to employers, despite historical calls from campaigners, including the now inactive UK's Human Genetics Commission (see BioNews 426).

Holmes has now joined the Army and will begin her training in October. In an interview on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour, she expressed her excitement about starting her career but also shared her concern that the Army's decision might not have been reviewed without the media attention her case received.