A 27 year old British woman is conceiving the country’s first designer baby. The baby will be guaranteed to be free from hereditary breast cancer. Doctors have used the controversial screening techniques. They have rejected six embryos which tested positive for the cancer gene in favor of healthy ones to ensure the child would not contract the disease. It can be added that the woman’s husband had the family history of breast cancer as his grandmother, mother, sister and cousin had all battled breast cancer. The researchers have used the technology called the pre-implantation diagnosis (PGD) to create the designer child.

Critics on the other hand, believe the process to be unethical because it destroys embryos. There are also fears it could lead to the creation of designer babies that are chosen for their looks or intelligence.

It can be added that more then 2,000 breast cancer cases diagnosed in Britain each year are thought to be caused by either the BRCA-1 or BRCA-2 genes, which can both be detected in embryos. Many women who were tested positive for either of the genes go through a mastectomy to avoid developing the disease later in life.

The couple’s doctor, Paul Serhal, medical director of the Assisted Conception Unit at University College London Hospital, said:

“Women now have the option of having this treatment to avoid the potentially guilty feeling of passing on this genetic abnormality to a child. This gives us the chance to eradicate this problem in families.”

The pregnant woman is hoping for a good result. She felt she had to go through the invasive IVF treatment even though she and her husband are fertile in order to try and safeguard her child. Tests on the couple’s 11 embryos, which involve extracting a single cell, were carried out when they were just three days old and six were found to have the gene.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk