Lifting the ‘family curse’
Andrea Farkas Patenaude flicked an image onto the screen at the front of the room. There, larger than life, was actress, humanitarian, director, and iconic beauty Angelina Jolie, arms crossed, in the dramatic black-and-white photo from Time Magazine’s cover in May. “If anyone told me a year ago that the two words likely to pop into your mind when you see this picture are ‘prophylactic mastectomy,’ ” Patenaude said, “I would have fallen off my chair.” Early this year, Jolie underwent the procedure during which healthy breasts are removed to reduce future cancer risk. Jolie later explained that she did so because of her family history and her positive test for the breast cancer gene BRCA1. Her mother died of ovarian cancer at age 56. Though physicians have performed prophylactic mastectomies for years, there has been very little public discourse on the subject, Patenaude said. That has left high-risk women who are considering...