14 May – Breaking news, actress and director Angelina Jolie has just announced that she had a preventive double mastectomy after discovering that she carries a mutation of the BRCA1 gene, which means there is a huge chance that she could develop breast cancer and ovarian cancer. As her 56-year-old mother, actress and producer Marcheline Bertrand passed away due to ovarian cancer in 2007, the possibility that her daughter may have inherited the gene and danger as well was always there, and now it has been confirmed. In an attempt to lessen her risk, Jolie decided to undergo the surgery. "I can tell my children that they don't need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer," she said. Jolie explained that her "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. Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could. I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy." The "SALT" actress has just concluded her three-month medical stint at the Pink Lotus Breast Center in California that included the mastectomies and reconstruction. "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," Jolie wrote. "My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent." She acknowledged that a double mastectomy is not an all-encompassing choice for women, but she hopes that "every woman, especially if you have a family history of breast or ovarian cancer, to seek out the information and medical experts who can help you through this aspect of your life, and to make your own informed choices."
However, there is currently no comment from her long-time partner, actor Brad Pitt, with whom she has three biological and three adopted children with, about her recent surgery.