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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.'"
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.
Moot point. This cancer is possible in both sexes.
I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable
All that happened was screening. They didn't screw with nature, they just took a peek to see whether the embryo had the gene or not.
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...
"licensed this treatment"?
That is without a doubt one of the scariest things I've read lately.
IIRC the ratio between women and men affected by breast cancer is 100:1. So it makes a big difference.
However, those statistics are about breast cancer in general. Maybe someone with a medical background can enlighten us about the specific ratio of BRCA1.
I don't read replies by ACs.
Of course, in the article's case, they didn't remove anything. They screened out the embryos that had the undesirable gene. It's like the difference between buying a car with an automatic and trying to convert it to manual, versus only considering cars that come with manual transmissions when shopping.
I do think it's fascinating that so much of the "junk" DNA may actually do something useful. It'll be interesting to find out exactly what.
Program Intellivision!
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.)