A baby girl was born in England who was tested before conception for a gene that is a marker for developing breast cancer.
The girl is the first person born who was screened for the BRCA1 gene. Doctors say if she carried the gene, she would have had an 80-percent chance of being diagnosed with breast cancer later in life.
Three generations of women in the little girl's father were diagnosed with breast cancer in their 20s.
So-called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis is done by taking a cell from the embryo at the eight-cell stage of development - when the embryo is about three days old. Doctors then find an embryo that is free of BRCA1 and implant it back into the woman's womb.
The procedure could be used to prevent a child being born that carries the risk for other diseases like cervical cancer and cystic fibrosis.
But the practice has also raised ethical red flags. Josephine Quintaville, of the group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, told the BBC that the procedure goes too far.
"I hope 20 years down the line we have eradicated breast cancer - not eradicated the carriers," she told BBC News.
0 comments:
Post a Comment