Do any of my fellow HN readers know enough to say that Angelina Jolie processed the available information of her extremely high risk of breast cancer correctly? Is the mathematics logical?
Something I wondered is, that given that 1 in 3 American women will have cancer sometime during their life, (and 1 in 5 will die from cancer), how much has she improved things by reducing from 87% to 5% the chance of having one specific cancer?
A 25-year-old woman with no mutation in her BRCA genes has an 84% probability to reach at least the age of 70.[16] Of those not surviving, 11% die from either breast or ovarian cancer, and 89% from other causes.
Compared to that, a woman with a high-risk BRCA1 mutation, if she had breast cancer screening but no prophylactic medical or surgical intervention, would have only 59% chance to reach age 70, twenty-five percentage points lower than normal. Of those women not surviving, 26% would die of breast cancer, 46% ovarian cancer, and 28% other causes.[16]
Women with high-risk BRCA2 mutations, with screening but with no prophylactic medical or surgical intervention, would have only 75% chance to reach age 70, nine percentage points lower than normal. Of those not surviving, 21% would die of breast cancer, 25% ovarian cancer and 54% other causes.[16]
The likelihood of surviving to at least age 70 can be improved by several medical interventions, notably prophylactic mastectomy and oophorectomy.[16]
Well, you can't really say anything about cancer without the "before the age of XX" part. Like, if she had an 87% chance of being diagnosed with breast cancer before the age of 57 like her mother, then she has improved her lifetime by a lot.
(even if you take the 33% percent number, she went from 87% to ~33%, tell me that's not significant).
Also keep in mind that breast cancer is in a rather critical area, the slightest of spread affects the most vital of organs, this has a large effect on the survivability.
With the current speed of technology, I think anything that delays cancer is something that gives you an increased chance of surviving cancer.
Something I wondered is, that given that 1 in 3 American women will have cancer sometime during their life, (and 1 in 5 will die from cancer), how much has she improved things by reducing from 87% to 5% the chance of having one specific cancer?