Baby to be born guaranteed free from hereditary breast cancer

by Rich Bowden - Jun 30 2008, 00:13

A U.K. woman who agreed to have her embryos screened to remove an inherited cancer gene from her husband will give birth to the country's first baby guaranteed free from breast cancer.

The British Sunday Times reports that the twenty-seven-year-old woman produced eleven embryos, five of which were discovered to be free of the hereditary gene, with two implanted in the woman's womb. The gene had seen her husband's sister, mother, grandmother and cousin diagnosed with breast cancer, according to the newspaper.

The woman, who is now over three months pregnant, said, "For the past three generations, every single woman in my husband's family has had breast cancer, as early as 27 and 29. We felt that, if there was a possibility of eliminating this for our children, then that was a route we had to go down.

"It has been successful for us which means we are eliminating the gene from our line."

“We had been through his sister being ill, so it was something we had seen first hand. I thought this was something I had to try because, if we had a daughter with the gene, and she was ill, I couldn’t look her in the face and say I didn’t try,” the woman who preferred not to be named said.

Medical researchers say around five percent of Britain's 44,000 cases of breast cancer diagnosed each year are caused by the BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 genes. They say thousands of cases of cases could be avoided by such screening.

The couple had to conceive using IVF even though they were fertile so that the embryos could be successfully screened.

The Times reported that an Israeli mother is the only known other person to have conceived after undergoing similar treatment.

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