Think Pinker

It seems we’ve reached a new day when it comes to the fight against breast cancer. According to the CBC it seems a British woman who is now 14 weeks pregnant will be the first woman ever to deliver a baby that will be guaranteed free of any hereditary breast cancer. But how is that?

Medical science has identified the gene that is responsible for hereditary breast cancer which means they can identify the genetic marker, and it seems their science is being put to the test right now.

In this case, it was a result of in vitro fertilization. The father’s side had three generations of women who had developed breast cancer. One of the healthy embryos was free of the gene so it was used to ensure if the child was female she would not be faced with breast cancer, at least not from a genetic source.

What does this mean to women around the world? For women using in vitro fertilization the process of identifying the gene is now available to all, and it’s anticipated that pregnant women will one day also have the opportunity to know if their fetus is carrying the gene. The problem is that only 5% of breast cancer is actually genetic. That leaves 95% that’s environmental in nature. Some believe that good healthy children may be aborted just because of the marker gene yet those children may never develop breast cancer.

It’s important to look past the ethical debate here and recognize the potential that this type of research has over the long term. Perhaps in the future this same technology could be used to screen young girls, so that they could be better monitored for hereditary breast cancer, which could be caught at a much earlier stage.

Wherever this may take us in the future remains to be seen, but one has to admit it really is a step towards a cure or a prevention of hereditary breast cancer.