Three years ago, Angelina Jolie announced in a New York Times op-ed that she'd had a preventive double mastectomy after testing positive for mutations in the BRCA1 gene, which put her at an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancers.
The article went hugely viral, and became a flashpoint in the debate about breast cancer risk and prevention. It also spurred a bunch of researchers to study what impact Jolie's decision might have on mastectomy rates and testing for the cancer-causing BRCA1 and 2 genetic mutations.
In the latest paper, published in the BMJ, researchers from Harvard looked at insurance data from nearly 10 million women before and after Jolie's May 2013 editorial.
