Post by Ashropshirelady on May 27, 2013 15:39:56 GMT
Are Women Being Misled into a False Sense of Security?
By Dr. Mercola
Some days I wonder if this is all a bad dream. How on earth have we come to this craziness? The latest and greatest “preventative” strategy for women genetically predisposed to breast cancer is amputation, which puts the wheels in motion for this type of “preventive surgery” to be covered by health insurance.
I’m referring, of course, to Angelina Jolie’s recent and very public decision to undergo a double mastectomy as a prophylactic measure. While she admits this is a very personal decision, the impacts to the public could be quite significant based on her celebrity influence.
Her mother died from ovarian cancer at the age of 56, and Jolie carries a hereditary gene mutation associated with both breast- and ovarian cancer. According to Jolie, who revealed her decision in an op-ed in the New York Times:1
“My doctors estimated that I had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer, although the risk is different in the case of each woman.
Only a fraction of breast cancers result from an inherited gene mutation. Those with a defect in BRCA1 have a 65 percent risk of getting it, on average.
Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could. ... I wanted to write this to tell other women that the decision to have a mastectomy was not easy. But it is one I am very happy that I made.
My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent. I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer.”
It is nearly incomprehensible to me how any researcher can give such precise predictions of future cancer risk based on genetics. The only explanation is near complete ignorance of the science of epigenetics and the power we all have to change the expression of our genes.
articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/05/27/angelina-jolie-double-mastectomy.aspx?e_cid=20130527_DNL_ProdTest1_art_1&utm_source=dnl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=art1&utm_campaign=20130527ProdTest1
By Dr. Mercola
Some days I wonder if this is all a bad dream. How on earth have we come to this craziness? The latest and greatest “preventative” strategy for women genetically predisposed to breast cancer is amputation, which puts the wheels in motion for this type of “preventive surgery” to be covered by health insurance.
I’m referring, of course, to Angelina Jolie’s recent and very public decision to undergo a double mastectomy as a prophylactic measure. While she admits this is a very personal decision, the impacts to the public could be quite significant based on her celebrity influence.
Her mother died from ovarian cancer at the age of 56, and Jolie carries a hereditary gene mutation associated with both breast- and ovarian cancer. According to Jolie, who revealed her decision in an op-ed in the New York Times:1
“My doctors estimated that I had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer, although the risk is different in the case of each woman.
Only a fraction of breast cancers result from an inherited gene mutation. Those with a defect in BRCA1 have a 65 percent risk of getting it, on average.
Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could. ... I wanted to write this to tell other women that the decision to have a mastectomy was not easy. But it is one I am very happy that I made.
My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent. I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer.”
It is nearly incomprehensible to me how any researcher can give such precise predictions of future cancer risk based on genetics. The only explanation is near complete ignorance of the science of epigenetics and the power we all have to change the expression of our genes.
articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/05/27/angelina-jolie-double-mastectomy.aspx?e_cid=20130527_DNL_ProdTest1_art_1&utm_source=dnl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=art1&utm_campaign=20130527ProdTest1
