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 said on January 09. "The mother and her little girl are doing very well," said University College London (UCL) of the baby, who grew from an embryo screened to ensure it did not contain the faulty BRCA 1 gene.
The baby's 27-year-old mother, who wants to remain anonymous, decided to take the step because several of her husband's close female relatives suffered from breast cancer.
Any daughter born with the BRCA 1 gene has an 80 per cent risk of developing breast cancer and a 60 per cent chance of developing ovarian cancer - as well as a 50 percent risk of passing on the anomaly to their own children. Doctors said the parents were relieved to have a guarantee that the faulty gene would not be passed to their daughter.
"This little girl will not face the spectre of developing this genetic form of breast cancer or ovarian cancer in her adult life," said Paul Serhal, head of the Assisted Conception Unit at UCL Hospital. The procedure was carried out using a technique known as pre-implantation genetic diagnosis which has already been used here to screen embryos resulting from in vitro fertilisation for disorders like cystic fibrosis.
It was given the green light in Britain in 2006. The procedure is still relatively rare but has been used to screen embryos for breast cancer in the United States and Belgium.