To "any woman reading this", she said, "I hope it helps you to know you have options ... It has got to be a priority to ensure that more women can access gene testing and lifesaving preventive treatment, whatever their means and background, wherever they live".
It may be mere coincidence that Myriad Genetics, the sole producer of the tests, was in the United States Supreme Court last month defending its right to hold patents on the genes in question, BRCA1 and BRCA2.
Doctors are always the last people to criticise anybody's personal choice of treatment and confine their public comment to generalised points of information. An Australian professor of oncology, Geoff Lindeman, was suitably cautious in response to questions put to him by The Conversation website after Jolie's article appeared.
The BRCA1 mutation she carries, he explained, reduces the genes' ability to repair breaks in its DNA. "In some people this can lead to the development of cancer."
Should women be tested for it?
"Not routinely," he replied. "Genetic testing should be carried out following counselling after a proper assessment of risk."
Only about 5 per cent of breast cancers are hereditary, he said. About 1 in 800 women carry a mutation and their risk of cancer was somewhere between 40 and 65 per cent.
The 87 per cent likelihood that Jolie faced was "the upper end of risk when the gene was first discovered. Looking at the general population the risk is probably less, but for some families with very striking family histories, it could be this high".
The preventive options he suggested were, "close monitoring which includes MRI scans and mammograms starting at a suitable age. There are also drugs such as Tamoxifen that can halve the risk". In Australia about 20 per cent of women carrying the gene opted for preventive surgery.
Men too can inherit the BRCA2 mutation, increasing their risk of prostate cancer. I don't know what I would do, but I hope I would choose to keep any organ for as long as it remained healthy. The idea of excising living tissue that has not yet let you down seems like a betrayal somehow, a premature surrender to what might never happen.
I wonder if the geneticists who gave Angelina Jolie an 87 per cent risk of developing breast cancer also told her that "developing breast cancer" does not necessarily mean you will die of it.
The aforementioned website ran an interesting series of professional articles last year on the subject of over-diagnosis. Road accident post-mortem examinations have found far more men with prostate cancer than the proportion of the male population who die of the disease.
Likewise, breast screening has produced many more cases for treatment than ever proved fatal. Research suggests one case in three would have died without treatment. Some put the ratio nearer to 1 in 15.
Possibly hereditary cancers have a higher fatal rate but I would have thought it useful to weigh those odds against the genetic risk before deciding on drastic surgery.
Medical science has raced far ahead of our ability to keep a sense of proportion about the risks it can identify. That was less of a problem in the days when doctors made all the decisions and took sensible, calculated risks that patients "didn't need to know".
But when modern diagnostic tools are combined with a culture of informed patient consent, we can be confronted with terrifying possibilities.
Angelina Jolie saw her mother die at age 56 after 10 years of treatment for breast cancer. Now, she writes, "I can tell my children they don't need to fear they will lose me."
That is one less fear for them but her article did not mention whether they also carry the gene mutation. How sad if a girl or boy should come to maturity regarding an organ of their developing sexuality as a death sentence unless they get rid of it. Sad and unnecessary.
