On average one woman out of ten has or will have breast cancer; breast cancer is the most frequent cancer in women and the 75% of the cases are in women over 50 years old. 
[image credits: http://www.worldwidebreastcancer.com/learn/breast-cancer-statistics-worldwide/ ]
Lately breast cancer have been the focus of the media attention due to the article written on the New York Times by the famous actress Angelina Jolie, who declared that she had undergo a heavy operation called “double mastectomy” to low the risk of getting breast cancer in the next years.
The article is very well written and it explains why she decided to prevent the cancer in this way: her mother died 6 years ago of the same cancer and Angelina Jolie herself have been told to be a carrier of a mutation of the gene BRCA1; this gene mutation (with the one of the gene BRCA2) is responsible of more of the 50% of inherited breast cancer. But just the 5-7% of all the women affected by this cancer have a mutation in genes BRCA1/2, so the Angelina Jolie’s i is rare.
Even though some doctors applauded her disclosure about the cancer and the operation and think that this episode could lead more women with breast cancer cases in the family health history to get checked for the BRCA1/2 mutations or at least to get a mammogram, many other doctors fear that the already high percentage of women that chose a preventive mastectomy would further increase due to the effect of the “I should do like Angelina Jolie did”.
In my opinion in case like this media are almost as powerful as the doctors: presenting a story, giving a face to a disease is definitely useful in raising the women’s interest in the illness and hopefully create more awareness of it; but, as said before, it could also create a dangerous precedent. It all lies in the way we write these stories and give the right background for a discussion.
Want to know more about breast cancer and it’s prevention? Here are some websites that I found very useful:
http://www.worldwidebreastcancer.com
WHO (world health organization)
And here an interesting article on the NY Times about mastectomy and breast reconstruction.
SoScience 
Reblogged this on and commented:
my first article on the brand new SoScience blog 🙂
Thought on science and society…
You refer to the power of the media. But it seems Angelina Jolie or her PR people decided actively to put this issue into the public domain. If you were an editor of New York Times and you received this article from Ms Jolie, would you say, “No, thank you”?
I would say “yes of course”: I have to say that the NYTimes had handled the question very well. The piece was written by Angelina Jolie herself and they have published other articles on the subject, showing different opinions. In other countries (like in Italy on the Corriere della Sera) I’ve read articles that weren’t so balanced. The power of media was referred also to the potential power of media in handling delicate subject.