It used to be that if there was a name aligned with "choice," it was Sophie. "Choice" is now and maybe forever associated with Angelina Jolie.

I have been involved in research in this area for 17 years, since shortly after BRCA1 and BRCA2 were discovered, and I have no idea what I would do if I were a woman faced with this decision. The diagnosis of a mutation is just words on paper, but the risks they foreshadow are very real.

Reading her thoughtful Op-Ed in the New York Times, I could not help but think about Ms. Jolie's ubiquitous Lara Croft character -- the adventurer, the warrior, the intellectual, the sex symbol. Today, Ms. Jolie has stepped out in what may be one of her most defining roles.

There I was on one end of the phone trying to sound calm, cool and collected because I wanted to protect her. And there she was on the other end of the phone, offering consoliatory words in an effort to protect me, her daughter.

Like me, Angelina Jolie opted to do whatever she could to drastically decrease the odds of being diagnosed with cancer -- she underwent a prophylactic bilateral mastectomy.

Breast cancer was never a part of the language of my life. It didn't lurk in the corners of my childhood or adolescence. And when stories cropped up in my adult years, they belonged to someone else; friends of friends or the mother, aunt or sister of so-and-so.

It is terror your friends and family do not get to touch or soothe because you pretend it's not there, and that is how you get dressed every day.

An incredibly brave breast cancer survivor has decided to share images of her post-mastectomy body with the world. Ottawa-based Kelly Davidson, 34...

In October, my father-in-law walks with pride in the breast cancer walk. The rest of the year? You can bet he'll be talking the talk.

I'm now a statistic. Added to being a Jewish American female from New York, I am now a cancer survivor. I've wanted to be many things. I never thought this would be one of them.