Historic birth of cancer-immune baby

Historic birth of cancer-immune baby

www.news.com.au

A MOTHER who is the first woman in Britain to have a baby selected free of a gene which causes breast cancer has given birth successfully, doctors say.

"The mother and her little girl are doing very well,'' said University College London (UCL) today.

The baby grew from an embryo screened to ensure it did not contain the faulty BRCA 1 gene.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Designer babies ready to order?

Hmmmm, I'm not sure what to think about this. While it's great to be able to want a 'perfect' human baby, it's not guaranteed to produce a perfect person.

It reminds me of the movie Gattaca, where natural born babies are considered inferior to those who have been genetically modified.

A scary future ahead, possibly. They won't stop at one gene being modified in one baby. It will only take off from here.

www.news.com.au
(visit the link for the full news article)

These are interesting times we live in...

And who draws the line as to what gene manipulation is good, and what isn't? I understand the need to have healthy people, but what happened to natural selection?

Nature will adapt to our genetic manipulation.

Personally I feel that offering an option for a cancer free life is a great thing, but that same child can still be hit by a car or die from a random accident at anytime. We cannot live in bubbles.

We may put a detour on our health and the issues that arise, but the end destination is still, and always will be, the same. Death.

Nothing wrong with life being unpredictable. It gives us a true appreciation for the day to day things and being alive.

I think that gene altering our children in ways like this to protect them from disease would be amazing if everybody could access/afford it.

I don't think gene altering our children is cool to select the color of their hair or the strength of their athletic ability.

wow a lot sooner than i expected.
it does however raise some interesting questions.
what would the long term effects be of gene manipulation?
no one would know for sure in this day and age.
would it create a new caste system?
could it be the start of a mutant army of screaming killer babies with rocket launcher armpits?

as tezzajw said it does indeed remind one of the movie gattaca, if you dont know it watch it, brilliant movie.
another movie i am reminded off is a combination of children of men and stargate sg1, more specifically the asgaard who lost the ability to reproduce due to genetic manipulation, children of men would be a good example of how the world would look should this happen.

This woman had a rampant history of breast cancer in her family history,the chances of it being passed on to a child without this were 50%.Its not as if you just walk up and they will do this,the doctors evaluated her family tree and deemed the procedure was fit for her...I see no problem with this.

the aim should to remove cancer causing genes from the genepool so future natural births dont result in cancer.

natural selection is no longer in effect with humans,our genome is degrading and will continue too thus we must control our genome ourselves.
desinger babies is hysteria,its nothing of the sort,its simply removing negativ mutations from the genepool.

the question is how did these negative genes get their in the first place?, sabateurs or lack of natural selection?
the thing that worries me is the worldwide nature of these genes ,usually mutationas are localized in populations unless they are ancient and had time spread.some genes have appeared suddenly across the world,the intelligence gene for example appeared suddenly 2000 years ago across the world,perhaps our benifactors restored one of our natural genes.

humans have a startling amount of negative genes compared to animals.

Not sure that I buy this. Remember, they said the Titanic was unsinkable, too.

Originally posted by welivefortheson
desinger babies is hysteria,its nothing of the sort,its simply removing negativ mutations from the genepool.

This baby was 'designed' to have a particular gene altered. There was nothing 'natural' about this.

Originally posted by tezzajw
Designer babies ready to order?

That was my first thought before I even clicked on the thread.


Yeah, it seems like a good thing. Who wouldn't want to ensure that their child would be immune to cancers and diseases? I know I would. But what you have to stop and think about is the massive potential for this to go down an extremely bad road. In the hands of the wrong person this could lead to disaster.

I did some research on this a year or so ago for a class. The possibilities are endless, and frightening really. I'll have to see if I can dig up the research I did.

It seems somewhat incorrect to term the baby "cancer-immune". She may be immune to breast cancer; but to any cancer? Is that actually possible?

reply to post by Solomons


sorry if my post conveyed that i was negative to the idea, i am not.
i would like to see this technology in widespread use if it is harmless, all i am saying is that we barely know what our 'junk' dna is for so is it really the best time for us to begin fiddling?

in this particular case though it is a single malfunctioning gene, as far as i am concerned i see no danger on that level of manipulation.
all we have to remember is that while using it on the small scale may not prove dangerous at all, using it on a more major scale could be a disaster, remember DDT??
in small amounts DDT would not course any kind of buildup, but as soon as they started using it on a major scale the natural cleaning process of nature started to fall behind and it ended up as a major threat to the population.

All I can picture is everyone being born with no health risks and disease free...and then I picture what the world's population will look like 30 years from now...

Michelle

Well actually it is NOT a cancer free baby. The baby just lacks the gene mutation that increases the likelihood of breast cancer. She could still get breast cancer, or any other type of cancer for that matter.

I can't imagine why a parent would NOT want to prevent their children from carrying bad genes if they can avoid it. I mean other than the ethical issues some people have with invitro (i.e. multiple embros, only some allowed to survive).

Just to clarify: This baby is not the product of genetic alteration to remove the gene. In vitro embryos produced by the couple were screened for the gene and the embryo free of the cancer gene was selected for implantation.

And, yes, the headline is typically sensational. This baby is only safe from the forms of cancer caused by the presence of that gene - she is not "cancer-immune"

Originally posted by Solomons
This woman had a rampant history of breast cancer in her family history,the chances of it being passed on to a child without this were 50%.Its not as if you just walk up and they will do this,the doctors evaluated her family tree and deemed the procedure was fit for her...I see no problem with this.

A doctor can look at a family tree and see a history of lung cancer and then screen out the lung cancer gene so the offspring can smoke like a chimney?
look at the family tree and see a history oh heart disease, so once again get screened to produce someone who can eat even more crap and become even heavier?

If nature decided cancer was needed, so be it,
This type of research can only lead to something bad even though it appears to offer something good.

remember that every action has an equal and opposite reaction

Originally posted by munkey66

If nature decided cancer was needed, so be it,
This type of research can only lead to something bad even though it appears to offer something good.

remember that every action has an equal and opposite reaction

what if cancer is just a freak of nature and serves no real purpose?
we have already blown evolution quite a blow by caring for our fellow man, not that we are doing that very satisfactory .
every time a doctor saves a patient with an inherited disease he is actually going against evolution in the common sense.
we have however evolved a lot on a social and intellectual level.

as for newton's second law, that only works in physics, as soon as you have emotions and opinions thrown into it, it kinda goes out the window.

Originally posted by munkey66

Originally posted by Solomons
This woman had a rampant history of breast cancer in her family history,the chances of it being passed on to a child without this were 50%.Its not as if you just walk up and they will do this,the doctors evaluated her family tree and deemed the procedure was fit for her...I see no problem with this.

A doctor can look at a family tree and see a history of lung cancer and then screen out the lung cancer gene so the offspring can smoke like a chimney?
look at the family tree and see a history oh heart disease, so once again get screened to produce someone who can eat even more crap and become even heavier?

If nature decided cancer was needed, so be it,
This type of research can only lead to something bad even though it appears to offer something good.

remember that every action has an equal and opposite reaction

So if you had a genetic form of cancer,and you knew it was more than likely to pass on to your child.There was a possible treatment not for that child to never get cancer but this genetic form that has plauged much of your family history, you wouldnt have the procedure?

[edit on 9-1-2009 by Solomons]