Angelina Jolie has never lacked for influence. When she adopted a baby from Ethiopia, inquiries at U.S. adoption agencies about other Ethiopian orphans doubled. When she named other children Vivienne or Maddox, those names shot up the popularity charts for American newborns. So this week, when a woman known for her powerfully iconic beauty announced that she had undergone an elective double mastectomy to reduce her genetically high risk of breast cancer, it was a cultural and medical earthquake — a revelation so arresting it became the subject of TIME’s newest cover story, which will publish to TIME.com Thursday morning (before hitting newsstands Friday).
Jolie, by nearly universal agreement, made the right choice for her. She tested positive for the breast cancer-related BRCA1 gene, putting the probability that she would develop the disease at a terrifying 87%; after her surgery, her doctors put that number at just 5%. But a lot of experts worry that we may over-read the lessons. Genetic screening is a young science, and while we may have detected genes linked to a host of ills—Alzheimers disease, prostate cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, heart disease—we often do a terrible job of calculating our resulting risks, making irreversible decisions based on dangers that don’t exist. Jolie’s brave example can make us all smarter and help keep us healthier — but only if we take the right lessons from it.
To read the new cover story, visit Time.com/Angelina on Thursday morning. Free for subscribers (or purchase a new digital pass).
Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2013/05/15/the-angelina-effect-times-new-cover-image-revealed/#ixzz2TNiy5AV2
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