Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
nature played with us first, it's only fair that we reciprocate.
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*
Plenty of children, but not plenty of infants. There's a lack of babies, if you want to adopt and take less than a few years you're limited to grown children. Many of them have emotional or physical handicaps and severe mental issues. Anyone who adopts one gets high praise from me, but I don't fault anyone who doesn't have the courage to do so. And most people want a baby that they can raise from birth, not someone already halfway grown.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
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.
That's all they did in GATTACA too. Screen embryos for (un)desirable genetic traits, and pick which one to implant. That's exactly what they did here.
The enemies of Democracy are
only the embryos are no more a human than that egg you had for breakfast is a chicken
I disagree. Most of those eggs in the supermarket are unfertilized. A fertilized egg is an actual chicken. I just don't care about chickens as much as I do people. You can't point to any one spot in an embryo's development (except fertilization) and say "There. Now it is human." With that ambiguity, is it not better to err on the side of caution?
with the end result being people having some incurable genetic illness.
Are the majority of disabled individuals unhappy that they are alive? It's not our place to make that judgment for them.
whats ethical about allowing someone to die a horrible death from cancer when you could have most likely been prevented?
This isn't really prevention. Sure, the child that is born will have a reduced risk of breast cancer, but that is because they simply throw out the ones that don't meet their criteria. So instead of having a higher chance of dying from breast cancer, these rejects have a guarantee of dying because their chances are higher than the one that was selected.
You can't point to any one spot in an embryo's development (except fertilization) and say "There. Now it is human." With that ambiguity, is it not better to err on the side of caution?
FTFA:
Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) involves taking a cell from an embryo at the eight-cell stage of development, when it is around three-days old, and testing it.
I can certainly point to this spot and say "There. It is not yet human." It is eight cells. What counts is a nervous system and perhaps some sort of brain function. We can surely agree on some sort of "fuzzy" criteria that say "if it looks like it could feel pain or might be self-aware, don't kill it." I think this stage is safely below any such possible criteria.
I understand wanting to protect life, but saying that even the potential for life must be protected can be taken to absurd extremes -- as religious proscription of contraceptive measures has shown -- and is really just absurd in itself.
Don't blame me -- I voted for Roslin.
What counts is a nervous system and perhaps some sort of brain function
So 5 minutes before we could identify brain function, it isn't alive? The boundary is just too fuzzy. An embryo hasn't developed a great deal compared to where it was a hour beforehand.
I understand wanting to protect life, but saying that even the potential for life must be protected can be taken to absurd extremes -- as religious proscription of contraceptive measures has shown -- and is really just absurd in itself.
I agree, potential for life != life. That's why I don't care one way or the other about preventive contraception. But I am not of the opinion that a fertilized egg is merely "potential life".
I feel that conception is a good point because it is the single most defining instant of a human's development. The eggs and sperm won't grow into an adult human on their own, no matter how much nutrients you give them. An embryo will.
GATTACA always bothered me since you don't see Vincent's success, only that he was lucky enough to trick the system. Despite the movie's message, in the end he wasn't fit enough to go, his heart wasn't strong enough as shown in the treadmill scene, and his eyesight was a serious liability. I always had to wonder at the end of the movie when he's going into space if his heart gave out in the second month, or he lost a contact or some other thing that they tried to screen for that cost the success of the mission and potentially the lives of the other members of the crew.
I know the message the movie was giving, and in terms of his relationship with what's her face it seemed to be more poignant, but I couldn't help think that his actions were all hubris and were a huge risk to the mission and its crew.
I've already adopted a 25/yr w/her own apartment and a steady job. It's not all it's cracked up to be. Trust me.
My blog