those words from jolie s other half, brad pitt. jolie s revelation has prompted my next guests to open up about their own experiences of undergoing a mastectomy. joining me now is allison gilbert. like angelina jolie, allison lost her mom to cancer in her 50s, tested positive for brca1 and like angelina jolie, she elected to undergo a double mastectomy. it s nice to have you here and we appreciate your honesty on this subject. in the op-ed, she say the decision to have this mastectomy wasn t easy, so walk us through what the emotional, the mental status is for a woman to elect to have that that of surgery on healthy breast tissue at the time. it s so loaded. there s nothing more personal. having to look to the world in
from atlanta to talk more about this cancer gene, and more about this test that angelina took. good morning, elizabeth. good morning, christine. so this gene that she has is what s called the brca gene or breast cancer gene. women usually get tested in her situation, where they have a close relative or relatives with not just breast cancer, but also or instead of ovarian cancer, one or the other or sometimes both. so what she did is really smart. she knew her family history and she got herself tested. and when you get tested they might say guess what? you re good. you don t have any mutations. or in her case there were mutations. let s read a little part of her new york times article that talks about what was found in her case. she said a carry a faulty gene brca1 which sharply increases my risk of very muching breast cancer and ovarian cancer. my doctors estimated that i had an 87% risk of breast cancer and a 50% risk of ovarian cancer, although the risk is different
you should get the mammogram, but the art of medicine is to really individualize the care. for example, there are so many people who have family history of having certain genes with breast cancer. they may have brca1 and 2. those are at higher risk. we should look at them carefully. there are different types of prostate and breast cancers, heather. some are very aggressive. what they are saying in this study is that some of those cancers may not be really life threatening, they may not kill you, they may not cause, you know, spread or metastasize. so why should we really go after them and find it? the deal is that we don t know at this point the real biology of different type of cancers. we don t know which one is going to hurt somebody and which one is not, and that s why we do screening. can screening cost money? yes. it costs a lot. it can lead to overdiagnosis as we mentioned. but overdiagnosis does not have to be overtreatment, and that s
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two genes that were discovered in the 1990s which serve to help protect our dna from damage. when a copy doesn t work properly, it greatly increases the risk for breast and oovarian cancer. but both brca 1 and 2 increase the risk but brca1 occurs more earlier and brca2 has more risk for men. who is most likely to have this gene? it s very important for one to really have a good understanding of their own family history. the greatest risks are in those women who have had or have a family history of early onset breast cancer before the age of 50, have a personal family history of ovarian cancer, multiple breast cancer, any male breast cancer and also certain ethnic risks are at elevated risks for carrying one of these