Posted on 04/25/2007 11:44:25 PM PDT by Stoat
Two couples whose families have been ravaged by breast cancer are to become the first to screen embryos to prevent them having children at risk of the disease, The Times has learnt.
Tests will allow the couples to take the unprecedented step of selecting embryos free from a gene that carries a heightened risk of the cancer but does not always cause it. The move will reignite controversy over the ethics of embryo screening.
An application to test for the BRCA1 gene was submitted yesterday by Paul Serhal, of University College Hospital, London. It is expected to be approved within months as the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has already agreed in principle.
Opponents say that the test is unethical because it involves destroying some embryos that would never contract these conditions if allowed to develop into children. Even those that did become ill could expect many years of healthy life first.
Some critics fear that the tests move society farther down a slope that will lead ultimately to the creation of “designer babies” chosen for looks or intelligence.
However, the first patients say that the technology will allow them to spare their children a devastating genetic inheritance. One couple in their twenties, who would only be named as Matthew and Helen, have lost three generations to breast cancer.
Last May, the watchdog ruled it acceptable for doctors to screen embryos for genes such as BRCA1, which raise the risk of cancer in adulthood by between 60 and 80 per cent. Embryo screening was previously restricted to genes that carry a 90 to 100 per cent chance of causing disease.
The application is the first to be made under the new regime after a year of research to identify the precise mutations that affect Mr Serhal’s patients. Approval is likely in three to four months, once the HFEA has confirmed that the tests are reliable.
Women with a defective BRCA1 gene also have a 40 per cent risk of ovarian cancer. It is linked to prostate and breast cancer in men, who can also inherit it benignly and pass it on to their daughters.
Mr Serhal said that objections to screening ignored the harrowing family histories of the patients he is seeking to help, who have a chance to ensure their children avoid similar experiences. “We are talking about a killer that wipes out generation after generation of women,” Mr Serhal said. “You can have a preventive mastectomy, but this is traumatic and mutilating surgery that does not eliminate the risk.
“What we are trying to do here is to prevent this inherited disease from being a possibility in the first place. At least with these people’s children, we can annihilate the gene from the family tree.” Genes have also been identified that raise
the risk of conditions such as obesity, heart disease and mental illness. However, more than one gene is usually involved and the HFEA will not currently approve screening for these.
Supporters of screening point out that patients must use IVF even if fertile, and that many couples carrying defective genes will not choose this option. The HFEA code of practice also makes it clear that screening is allowed only for serious conditions.
When the licence is awarded, the couples will have IVF. This will allow a single cell to be removed from the embryo at the eight-cell stage, and tested for the defective BRCA1 gene. Only unaffected embryos will then be transferred to the womb.
Though the HFEA decided last May to accept applications to do this, after a public consultation was supportive, it has taken Mr Serhal’s team a year to develop a robust test for the specific mutations in the gene that each family carries.
The HFEA will not reconsider the ethics of screening, but will ask independent experts to review the reliability of the tests before awarding a licence. “We are very confident because the HFEA has already said in principle that this is OK,” Mr Serhal said.The HFEA said: “Each application for conditions such as this must be considered on a case-by-case basis because of the difference in the way that families are affected by these conditions.”
Josephine Quintavalle, of the embryo rights group, Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: “There has to be a better way of curing disease than this. It is very likely that in the not-too-distant future there will be a way of treating breast cancer that doesn’t rely on eliminating the carrier instead of curing the disease.”
Last year, The Timesrevealed the conception of Britain’s first “designer baby”, screened as an embryo for inherited cancer. The baby has since been born healthy, free from the gene carried by her mother that would have given her a 90 per cent chance of developing retinoblastoma, an eye tumour.
Health and Science Ping
Pro Life Ping
Moral Absolutes Ping
British women still make babies?
“Tests will allow the couples to take the unprecedented step of selecting embryos free from a gene that carries a heightened risk of the cancer but does not always cause it.”
And of course, in their all-knowing, all seeing intellectual state, they are proof-positive that that gene, when it does not cause or predispose one to cancer - due also to related life and environment factors - that it otherwise invokes no benefit towards any other “health” issue. /sarc
Of course, they know no such thing, but are willing to play God as if they do. The time will come when their toying with our design will turn out unforeseen burdens on humanity. But the originators of those “design corrections” will be no longer living to accept their guilt.
That’s nice. Instead of potentially dealing with breast cancer, these kids can die of matricide.
Eh, a BRCA1 mutation is a pretty nasty little gene. And it’s little cousin BRCA2 is, as well.
These enzymes normally help repair DNA damaged by exposure to carcinogens, radiation, or just general replication errors. Mutations associated with cancer in these genes pretty much takes out a pretty important part of your DNA repair machinery. The fact that they interact with p53 ought to say enough about their roles, frankly (at least to those who research them).
I’m not for choosing designer babies, but if we can snuff out a very strong risk for a disease, I’m not wholly opposed. We already allow choice by sex to some degree. Why not for families with strong histories of disease, especially for a disease so closely linked to one single gene?
Yes, it’s a slippery slope, and on those grounds, I’ll be rethinking this. How far from there to saying you start hearing demands for this or that?
where do you think the Chupicabra came from
thanks, bfl & watch out for ghouls
where do you think the Chupicabra came from
What is “the Chupicabra”?
“Yes, it’s a slippery slope, and on those grounds, I’ll be rethinking this”
And exactly because of that “slippery slope” I do not have to “rethink this” and the individual expedient benefits to me do not outweigh the adverse impacts to come precisely from that “slippery slope” of human hubris, arrogance, moral relativism and error that that slope will drift down into.
We are entering the territories of our worst errors - when we think we are God’s equal.
We are not.
“That’s nice. Instead of potentially dealing with breast cancer, these kids can die of matricide.”
Oh, “these kids” being the ones that might become fully formed fetuses in the womb, before mum decides that as they have the “suspect” gene to have a partial birth abortion (her choice, not a requirement of the circumstances)
versus
the fetuses she has the lab kill anyway, for having discovered the gene sooner in their development.
And the difference in those deaths is exactly what?
Oh, that’s right, there is no difference, both are “matricide”, so your point is?
Whereas, my point is that in spite of the “possibility” of developing breast cancer, simply because of the gene, (a)some with the gene never do get breast cancer, (b)some with the gene who do get breast cancer get treatment and survive and (d) new treatments and cures are coming into the fore all the time. So, let the genes go their way, accept the child your act of pro-creation gave you, raise it and nurture it to the best of your ability and use your knowledge and faith and your child’s knowledge and faith to overcome life’s hurdles as they come, if they come.
The purpose of faith is not that life will be without hurdles, but that with faith you will get through them. Meanwhile, don’t play God.
As we kill our children before they get a disease, we try to ignore the fact that human beings get diseases, injuries, handicaps throughout life.
Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce... Uh, yeah, could you hold on a minute, ok I want the #3 super deal and can you add a cute little dimple in the chin, thanks.
My point is, it is killing its potential victims is an evil way to “cure” breast cancer.
While it does give a child the benefit of being free of a gene that greatly increases risk of a certain type of cancer, breast in this case, it does not prevent the child from getting the disease because of environmental factors, i.e. the highly argued Abortion/Breast Cancer link or no link for example and takes some focus away from those issues. It's a slippery slope.
Always wondered where in the bible it said that cannot improve our physical form or remove deficiencies?
We’re not perfect, maybe he created us weak and slow so we’d have something to build on?
Scary stuff.
Are we all going to be 6’2 with blonde hair in 3 more generations?
My point is, it is killing its potential victims is an evil way to “cure” breast cancer.
Is it killing a victim or do the other embryos go to other couples? I would be totally into that if they did not destroy embryos.
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