We are in the midst of a deadly drug epidemic so severe and widespread that few people in North America will remain untouched by it.

Up to this point, it had only been a hypothesis: that celebrity firepower can definitively drive consumer health behaviour in a certain direction. The case here concerns whether women wish to embark on a genetic hunting expedition to see if they are at “high risk” of developing a particular disease such as breast cancer, and the motivator in this case is Angelina Jolie.