'Cancer-free baby' raises ethical questions

By Richard Allen Greene
CNN

LONDON, England (CNN) - In a season celebrated for a miraculous birth, a mother and father in England are welcoming what must seem to them like a miracle.

Their newborn daughter, born Friday, is the first child in Britain known to have been screened as an embryo to ensure she did not carry a gene linked to breast and ovarian cancer.

She was screened in a lab, days after conception, for the BRCA-1 gene. People with the gene have a 50-80 percent chance of developing breast or ovarian cancer in their lifetimes.

British newspapers have dubbed the girl the "cancer-free" baby.