I think these advancements are great. Nothing worse than cancer: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/01/09/uk.cancerfree.baby/index.html?eref=rss_topstories Abner
I was amused by the following quote. I was ammused because, to me, it does seem to be a cure for cancer. Wouldn't it be a cure for everyone born with the same screening and if enough people are born using the same screening then it would be a cure for the whole human race?
I agree Bill. Those making the amusing quotes obviously have never suffered from cancer, or seen a family member die due to this disease. I hope expansion in to this kind of research, along with advances in stem cell research continue aggresively. Abner
In a technical sense she is correct that this method is no "cure", which would mean that your restoring the health of one that already has cancer. The method described in the article would be more along the lines of "eradicating" the disease by preventing the birth of any humans that may develop cancer. Which means that persons, such as my Grandmother, would have existed, just never born. I really enjoyed the movie Gattaca. It is relevant to this very subject and contains a lot of truth about the lack of restraint we humans have when given the power to play God.
And wouldn't it be great if everyone were born with Bill Huffman's official stamp of genetic natural superiority? Sorry if I can't buy into your eugenicist brave new world.
I believe that there is a significant difference between a potential father and mother screening their own potential offspring and a third party mandating genetic superiority. I did not state that I wanted to tell others what children they could have. Do you feel it would be "eugenicist" to pray that one's children were born resistant to these types of cancers? Assuming the answer is no, what is wrong then with doing your best to pass on the trait to your offspring?
I don't think that there is a single gene responsible for all breast cancer, let alone all cancer in general. There's a whole set of oncogenes that influence cancer in many different ways. What seems to have happened here is that a particular oncogene that's passed on in one particular family was knocked out. That doesn't guarantee that that this child won't eventually contract cancer by some other means. While I don't think that this is a cure for breast cancer, I don't have any ethical problem with the gene being deleted either. It's sounds like a good thing to me. I'd like to see all genetic diseases knocked out, but that's probably impossible.
