Whether impaired fork protection is enough to drive cancer development is not yet clear, but appears doubtful in view of a recent analysis of a murine Bard1-C-terminal mutant that exhibits poor fork protection, but shows no increased cancer development.10 Restoration of fork protection has recently emerged as means of resistance to HR-directed therapies in BRCA1/2-mutant cancers1 so that resolving the order and dependencies of BRCA1:BRCA2 and other critical ‘HR’ proteins in this pathway will be important to patient care. This evidence concerns the gene BRCA1 and cancer.