As a newlywed in the 1970s, I watched my vibrant, stylish maternal grandmother go from trim to gaunt. She and my grandfather had raced their family out of Vienna the day Hitler marched in. But now she was diagnosed with an ovarian tumor the size of an orange, too late for treatment to save her…
“I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer,” said actress Angelina Jolie last May when she announced that she underwent a preventive double mastectomy. Describing her pervasive family history of breast and ovarian cancer in a New York Times op-ed, Jolie said that she had…
When a friend pulled Harvey Singer in for a bear hug one weekend in Chicago in 2008, a shooting pain went through Singer’s chest. A couple weeks earlier, Singer had noticed a change on the side of his left nipple but had shrugged it off as the result of being “old and a little out…
Myriad Genetics may have lost its singular hold on the market for BRCA1 and BRCA2 testing in May 2013 when the Supreme Court ruled against the patenting of genes, but few outside the science and medical communities are aware that Myriad continues to possess a repository of patient data from BRCA testing that it does…
Angelina Jolie has no regrets. The 38-year-old actress opened up for the first time about her decision to undergo a preventative mastectomy in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “I’m great! I’m very happy I made the decision. I was very fortunate to have great doctors and very, very fortunate to have a good recovery and…
Diagnosed at 33, Sue Friedman had already undergone treatment when she found out about the BRCA2 mutation that had given her a 9-in-10 chance of developing hereditary breast cancer. Three years later, in 1999, Friedman founded FORCE: Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered, an organization advocating for awareness of hereditary breast and ovarian cancers. And…
What was Jewish about Angelina Jolie’s decision to have her breasts surgically removed? Everything. The Hollywood superstar stunned million of fans with the stark and eloquent announcement that she had chosen to proactively undergo the procedure to reduce her risk of contracting breast cancer. Jolie, whose mother died from breast cancer, explained that she took…
After actress Angelina Jolie announced her decision to have a double mastectomy back in May, it didn’t take long for synagogues and Shabbat tables in the Jewish community to buzz with a new conversation. Her choice to have her breasts surgically removed touched a raw nerve within the community: while one in every 800 individuals…
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