Miracle: Marriage Reunited

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‘Let’s just wait and see,’ Catriona said soothingly. ‘There’s no point in getting ahead of ourselves.’

‘I have a patient I’d like to discuss,’ Niall said. ‘It is a difficult case and I’d like to know how everybody feels—particularly the embryologists—before I see this lady.’

Everyone turned curious eyes on Niall.

‘I have been approached by a woman who wants us to carry out PGD—pre-implantation genetic diagnosis,’ he said to Robina, for the benefit of the camera. ‘She has a family history of breast cancer in the family and all the female relatives in her family have either died or have had the disease. As a precaution, she decided to have a prophylactic double mastectomy when she was eighteen, after genetic testing showed that she carried the variant BRCA1 gene.’

There was a sharp intake of breath followed by a murmur of sympathy from around the room.

‘Now that Isabel has joined us…’ he smiled at the curly-haired embryologist sitting on his right ‘…we are in a position to offer this service. But I want to know how everyone feels about it.’

‘Could you explain what it involves, Niall?’ Robina asked, knowing that this was exactly the kind of thing her viewers would be interested in. She only had a vague memory from researching her book of what the procedure involved and progress in this area was rapid.

‘I’ll let Isabel explain, as she’s the one who’d be doing the procedure.’

‘I’ll try and make it as simple as possible.’ Isabel took a sip of water. ‘We stimulate the ovaries, in the same way we do for our infertile ladies, and then fertilise the eggs in the lab. Once the eggs are fertilised they start dividing—one cell becomes two, two become four and so on. We wait until we have eight cells, then we remove one and test for the BRCA1 gene. If it’s positive, we move on to the next embryo and so on until we find one that doesn’t carry the gene. When we do, that is the embryo we replace.’

‘Don’t some people think this is too close to eugenics?’ Robina asked. ‘As in designer babies?’

‘Not at all,’ Niall interrupted quietly. ‘This isn’t selecting embryos based on hair colour or intelligence or anything like that. This is selection that will prevent someone almost certainly suffering from breast cancer later on in life.’