Angelina Jolie — actress, sex symbol and mother of six — whipped the Internet into a frenzy Tuesday after announcing her decision to have her ovaries removed in an elective surgery meant to prevent cancer.
“I feel feminine, and grounded in the choices I am making for myself and my family,” the actress wrote in a powerful op-ed for The New York Times. “I know my children will never have to say, ‘Mom died of ovarian cancer.’ “
Jolie’s mother died at age 56 after a decade-long battle with breast cancer. Last week, Jolie underwent a laparoscopic bilateral salpingo- oophorectomy to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes.
Jolie’s piece, urging readers to “take control and tackle head-on any health issue,” has researchers dubbing the phenomenon “the Angelina Jolie Effect.”
As the op-ed climbed the Times’ “Most Emailed” list, doctors say the buzz will likely drive more women to consider genetic testing and, perhaps, elective surgeries that research shows can drastically reduce the risk of cancer.
After undergoing genetic testing, Jolie, 39, discovered she carries a gene mutation that gives her an estimated 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer. She also lost her grandmother and aunt to cancer. Two years ago, in an equally explosive op-ed, Jolie shared her choice to have a double mastectomy.
Sign of risk
The average woman has a 12 percent risk of developing breast cancer during her life. Women who have inherited a faulty BRCA gene are about five times more likely to get breast cancer.
“A Nobel laureate could give the same message, and it might reach only a handful of people,” said David Fishman, director of the Mount Sinai Ovarian Cancer Risk Assessment Program in New York. “Angelina is using her celebrity in a heroic way, and she’s going to reach millions of people worldwide.”
Fishman estimates interest in genetic testing at Mount Sinai Hospital has nearly doubled since 2013.
“Since then, every single patient in my program has brought up Angelina Jolie,” said Fishman, whose program treats more than 2,000 women annually. “It takes a lot of courage for someone to be willing to share their private health care with the world. Her courage pushed a deeply sensitive issue into the spotlight.”
A study published last year in Breast Cancer Research uncovered a similar burst in popularity overseas: Referrals to breast cancer clinics more than doubled in the United Kingdom after Jolie wrote about her first procedure.
“Silent killer”
Ovarian cancer is the fifth-leading cause of cancer death in U.S. women, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The American Cancer Society estimates about 21,290 women will develop ovarian cancer this year, and roughly 14,180 will die from the disease.
Widely called “the silent killer,” it is hard to catch early without regular ultrasounds. Ovarian cancer often is detected at an advanced phase, where the five-year survival rate falls below 30 percent, according to research from Arizona State University.
A woman’s risk of developing breast or ovarian cancer increases significantly if she inherits a harmful mutation in what geneticists call the BRCA1 gene or the BRCA2 gene. (Men can also carry the mutations — and the heightened risks for breast cancer.)
Jolie’s article makes plain the anguish the results of the new blood tests brought. She said she immediately called her husband, actor Brad Pitt, who flew home from France within hours.
“The beautiful thing about such moments in life is that there is so much clarity. You know what you live for and what matters,” Jolie writes in her essay.
