Weeks after Angelina Jolie's double mastectomy aunt dies of breast cancer

Angelina Jolie's aunt Debbie Martin dies of breast cancer

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Jolie's mother's sister passed away less than two weeks after the actress underwent a preventative double mastectomy to avoid the same fate

Angelina Jolie had a double mastectomy to avoid breast cancer

By DAISY WYATT

Monday 27 May 2013

Angelina Jolie’s aunt has died from breast cancer less than two weeks after the actress underwent a double mastectomy to avoid such a fate.

Debbie Martin, sister to Jolie’s mother Marcheline Bertrand, passed away at the Palomar Medical Centre in Escondido, California on Sunday, aged 61.

Martin was the younger sister to Jolie’s mother, whose own death from ovarian cancer in 2007 inspired Jolie’s double mastectomy.

According to Martin’s husband Ron, she had the same defective BRCA1 gene as Jolie, but did not know about it until after her cancer diagnosis in 2004.

Ron said Martin “would have done exactly what Angelina did” had she known in advance of her genetic risk.

“We have seen Angelina a number of times since Debbie was diagnosed with breast cancer and Debbie and I were both very proud of her recent decision to have the double mastectomy and to do everything she can to keep her family from having to go through what we've been through,” he told E! News.

Jolie revealed in an op-ed in the New York Times on 14 May that she underwent a double mastectomy after discovering she carried the “faulty” BRCA1 gene.

Doctors told her she has an 87 per cent chance of developing breast cancer and a 50 per cent chance of getting ovarian cancer, the disease that killed her mother.

The 37-year-old Tomb Raider actress and humanitarian activist said the reason behind her decision was to reassure her children - of which she has three biological and three adopted - that the illness that took their grandmother would not do the same to her.

“I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer. It is reassuring that they see nothing that makes them uncomfortable. They can see my small scars and that’s it. Everything else is just Mommy, the same as she always was,” she said.