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Baby To Be Born Without the Gene For Breast Cancer
manoftin writes to tell us that next week a baby will be born without the gene for breast cancer, according to the BBC. "But he said that, in this case, not carrying the BRCA1 gene would not guarantee any daughter born to the couple would be unaffected by breast cancer because there are other genetic and environmental causes. Dr Alan Thornhill, scientific director of the London Bridge Fertility, Gynaecology and Genetics Centre, said: 'While the technology and approach used in this case is fairly routine, it is the first time in the UK that a family has successfully eliminated a mutant breast cancer gene for their child. It is a victory for both the parents and the HFEA that licensed this treatment.'"
For once, I'll recommend to RTFA first before commenting. It's a tough choice.
On one hand, it's great that a family with such a tough hereditary problem can know that their kids and grand-kids won't be affected. On the other hand, I'm just so scared of the consequences: we are playing with nature and past experience shows that we usually don't fully understand the long-term consequences of our actions. We usually regret such experiments.
But who am I to tell this family to go ahead and accept brest cancer? Can you look them in the eye and say "choose cancer"?
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(is it a boy or a girl?)
I don't understand what the real difference is from other types of embryo screening. Sure, there was a different method of screening here, but otherwise screening like this has been going on for a while. No new ethical implications that I see.
Sure, if genetic therapy is going to be the way of the future, genetic therapy tests need to be done, but testing this out on people, with *no* idea of the consequences is reprehensible...
I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable
The first step is taken on the road to GATTACA.*
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*A movie about children being screened for superior genes - and also the children who become "rejects" in society because they were naturally born with inferior genes. If you haven't seen this movie, I highly recommend it. A great science story.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
It's probably not the BRCA1 gene deleted, but the allele on BRCA1 associated with breast cancer is not present. The BRCA1 from Dad and the BRCA1 from Mom don't have the bad polymorphism on the gene.
I betcha the BRCA1 genes are there but the reporter is not good at science.
Is it possible for a gene to map to more than just one function?
If so, now that they've eliminated this gene, isn't it possible that they might have eliminated more than just breast cancer?
Ayyy there wait one god-lovin minute!! You can make God-n-baby Jesus's decisions for dem!!! You damn city slickers er goin da hell yah hear?!?!?! If God wants someone da have tit cancer they'll have it!! You city slickers n yer crazy scientific method... *spits in empty faygo bottle*
Otherwise, the robots will take over.
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BRCA1 is a known proto-oncogene with the potential to become an oncogene. That is, there are known, relatively common mutations that can occur on BRCA1 that will cause it to malfunction and cause/support cancer. However, in it's normal working function, BRCA1 is actually a tumor suppressor. So there is the distinct possibility that by knocking out BRCA that other, unintended consequences will result...
And if see doesn't activate within 30 years, she turns black.
"licensed this treatment"?
That is without a doubt one of the scariest things I've read lately.
Slashdorks like to play with their "juvenilia".
Breasts!
Most babies are born not wearing any jeans at all!
Although it does its best not to, the BBC article does make it clear that the baby lacks BRCA1, a gene which was involved in a staggering prevalence of breast cancer in the family. However many other genes involved in breast cancer may still be present.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Now a line of decedents will be healthier.
Bring on the high tech medicine!
I still want a replacement clone and a head transplant.
I want the body I had at 22.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
to welcome our new eugenically conceived supermen overloads.
HAIL KHAN!
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Here on Slashdot, we focus on breasts. In Soviet Russia, Breasts focus on you! (We should be so lucky!)
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We have a word for this, and the word is eugenics. How long until the threshold for undesirability is softened to a heart condition, or baldness? How long until the decisions are politically or religiously motivated? Killing the undesirables so that the "proper" children may thrive is a lesson we should not have to learn again. Yes, Godwin, but here the analogy is apt.
A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.
One of the disadvantages of Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD, which is what they used here) is that it requires implantation of a screened egg. That means all the lovely things that go with IVF [fertility] treatment -- drugs to synchronise your period with something a bit more predictable, in-vitro fertilisation, multiple embryos, and a few blood tests along the way.
If you want to make babies the usual way (i.e. by having sex), then you can't use this technique to screen for less desirable traits.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
Either way, the desirable trait of not having the breast Cancer gene will be passed on to the next generation, which might include girls. If not that one, then the next, and so on...
Just to clarify the headline and summary, and as is pointed out in the quote from Dr. Alan Thornhill in the original article:
Mutations in BRCA1 are linked to breast cancer , not just having the BRCA1 gene itself. BRCA1 is a critical tumor suppressor gene that helps maintain genomic integrity. Again, specific mutations in BRCA1 have been linked to breast cancer, not just "carrying the BRCA1 gene". Most of us carry the BRCA1 gene and it is expressed in a wide variety of tissues throughout our bodies. The BBC article uses the language such as "not carrying the BRCA1 gene", this is not entirely appropriate or even the issue at hand. The child will carry the BRCA1 gene, but without the specific mutations linked to breast cancer. (To be even more specific, the child will carry two alleles of the BRCA1 gene, one from each parent, both of which lack the mutations linked to breast cancer.)
Did anybody else read the headline and not get that it implied some sort of scientific intervention, after all i'm pretty sure that many children are naturally born without the gene for breast cancer?
On the date of delivery...
Researcher: Now, to finally see if we can genetically remove breast cancer from the world! Here comes the child now! And... and... and...
Doctor: Congratulations! It's a boy!
Dad: Aww... look, dear, he's beauti...
(slight pause)
Researcher: Ah, damnit.
baby that was born without the gene for breast cancer got breast cancer ~!...more after the /cialis/ commercial break.
Dont Judge The situation by the Misfortunate. Goga.
Your sig is awesome, first off.
Regardless of where you trace that line at which a set of cells earns the right to be called human, one does make the decision of life or death over it, as a society, and as a consequence, we do assert the right to kill. Is it really so different then, for the left wing to declare that a similar exclusion based on other attributes is an invalid choice? You choose to kill based upon a count of cells. Others might choose based on economic system, religion, culture or even race? What's the difference? We are all rationalizing killing. I mean, you might think that a fetus is a mass of cells that a mother should terminate, and that's fine, but why then get so worked up about someone else wanting to blow away a bunch of muslims. Maybe they are just a mass of cells to them? Maybe, to some people, 8 cells of an American is more valuable than 40 trillion of an Iranian, and vice versa. You might claim that it violates some basic and universal law, but, if you are trying to build a secular society, there is actually no such thing.
The one claim to genius that religion genuinely has is that, by defining humanity by something that cannot be detected (possession of a soul), we are obligated to assume that anything that might be human or could be human is entitled to basic rights. Take that soul out of the equation, and there's really no logical basis for arguing the moral superiority of your definition of humanity, versus anyone elses. You say a fetus isn't human, and off to the toilet with it, and someone else can say a muslim isn't human... what makes one better?
This is my sig.
Isnt this essentially eugenics but rebranded because the actual term itself has taken on such negative connotation because of the nazis?
OK. So women get breast cancer. It's invariably after the "breeding age". And what women are we talking about? "White Western women"?
What about the guys with Prostate cancer?
Nevertheless, they are all small potatoes (no pun intended).
Listen- Hasn't anyone (in America) woken up yet?
What's your view on the future of the "human" race?
Haven't you heard about the emasculating plastics?
"Plastics are the future, Ben!"
"OK! Gee, thanx, Mr. Robinson"
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- aqk
F U
I think it's more along the lines that even if you know about someone's genes you still can't predict their life. It's akin to predicting the future which we don't expect to be able to do.
To put it another way: if you don't know the future then how do you know what genes are important? perhaps in the upcoming unplanned world scenario the gene for determination and desire is more important than the one for perfect fitness?
If we plan too much and optimise too much then we are very vulnerable to risk.
This is all just my personal opinion.
Power to the people, kill whitey.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
We define death by the cessation of brain activity and even the Roman Catholic Church has accepted that since Pope Pius XII's declaration in 1956. Only a few of the more-fundamentalist religious sects don't accept brain death as the way to determine when we are no longer a human even if the heart is still beating.
Oversimplifying a bit, but not skipping anything essential, brain death is defined as the cessation of certain functions (spontaneous respiration, pupillary response, pain response, etc.) so why do you find it unacceptable to define the initiation of those functions as the start of human life?
Did you understand that you've been trying to argue that a brain-dead thing a fertilized egg) is a live human? Do you understand that there is no amount of nutrients we are able to give to a fertilized egg that will allow it to grow into an adult human? That, in fact, for us to be able to supply what a fetus needs to grow into an adult human it needs to have started at least a few of those functions whose cessation defines brain death?
Even the very fundamentalist religious sects I referred to above wouldn't consider a conglomeration of cells capable of the few functions a fertilized egg can perform to be alive or human if it was outside a mother's body so why do they so vehemently want to define it as a live human when it's inside a mother's body? "Potential".
This kind of sounds like playing god to me, noble cause, but also very likely has unknown side effects and consequences.
When you bake a cake in an oven, it's not easy to say at which point the mixture of flour, eggs, sugar etc become cake.
But that doesn't mean an arbitrary line should not be drawn (or should be drawn for that matter) stating that a cake mixture legally becomes cake at point X.
In the real world, you will often have to draw arbitrary lines somewhere. It may be stupid to do so, but often it is even more stupid to NOT do so.
And that is where we should be using our alleged intelligence and figuring out whether we should draw that arbitrary line (and if so, where), or not, or not _yet_.
BUT keep in mind: whether we should or not (and where), should be far _less_ to do with the physical stuff (8 cells, cake stickiness, etc), and more to do with the long term consequences.
After all we might say tomatoes are vegetables and not fruits for import purposes, and even if it is silly, it might be better overall to do so (at least till someone has a better idea or things change).
If we are going to say a bunch of human cells gets a right to live just on the basis of sufficient intelligence or personality, most people here (including me) shouldn't be alive.
Plenty of brains in the world but very little intelligence.
I'm interested in the sort of choices we are going to have to make as we keep extending human lives. Amazingly, more and more people live past 40 and miss out on plagues! As we shape our environment we avoid the more tried and true aspects of natural selection, but have yet to adapt to the new pressures we're creating. For instance, people born with weak heart valves don't die as often now. We've developed a whole suite of technologies to keep them around. A lot of medical technology is like this, expending resources to reshape selection pressures. Others have already pointed out that breast cancer tends to strike after, or at least late in, the fertile years of a woman's life. If there wasn't any medical science available, it's still unlikely that this particular gene would be pushed out of the population. It's only now that woman live long enough to witness its long term effects. So, in this case, we are selecting out a gene that wouldn't have been touched by "nature". Hell, I no longer know my own point. Just typing aloud. I guess I'm wondering if there is an ethical difference between treating diseases that would have likely been selected out overtime and those that are only problematic because we are extending our lives through medicine? Man, I'm going to get some coffee and think...why do I read things like this?
It's not fooling with nature.
Nature fools with us every day with viruses and bacteria that mess with our dna and give us cancer.
Alzheimer's is now suspected to be caused by a stupid cold sore virus.
Time to use nature to protect ourselves.
How many people had to die so this one child could have a reduced chance of getting breast cancer?
I bear the brca genes, as do all my family members and many other people of the same ethnic group, and it's that every single of us succumbed to ovarian or breast cancers.
The genes must have been passed down for a reason other than their involvement in the said ailments.
let me quote wikipedia on this
The BRCA1 protein is directly involved in the repair of damaged DNA.
[...]
Research suggests that both the BRCA1 and BRCA2 proteins regulate the activity of other genes and play a critical role in embryo development. The BRCA1 protein probably interacts with many other proteins, including tumor suppressors and regulators of the cell division cycle.
that gene might affect anything. They might be getting rid of a perfectly fine Jewish nose.
I can't help but wonder if a "gay gene" were discovered, if parents would use this to "correct" the sexual orientation of their children.
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