Hadassah & the BRCA Gene

I’m going to the Hadassah luncheon this Tuesday, the day before my next chemo. Murray Baumgarten is speaking on the future of Jewish Studies at UCSC. It’s being held at Ma Maison restaurant in Aptos. My mother-in-law, Lee, is very active with Hadassah in Santa Cruz. Thanks to Lee & my mom, I’ve been enjoying Hadassah’s fabulous magazine for many years. It covers everything from the TV show “In Treatment” (which was created in Israel) to how Koreans study the Talmud and teach it in every high school to sharpen the mind. Still, I never really knew all that Hadassah was about until recently. The organization does so much that I still don’t really know everything about it except that it’s a Zionist women’s fundraising organization (feminist-oriented) that has built hospitals in Israel where terror victims and terrorists are treated side by side.

Hadassah raises money for many different things but what interested me most recently (in light of my current illness) was an article in the November 2008 issue of Hadassah magazine called, “Breaking the Chain.” There they reported on the work being done at Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center in Ein Kerem, Israel, where they change the destinies of women who have the BRCA gene so that they can’t pass it on to their children. Using a technique with In Vitro Fertilization, they select only the 3 day old embryos to implant that don’t carry the gene. A handful of other hospitals do this worldwide but Hadassah is the only hospital that analyzes for Down’s Syndrome as well. There are many other genetic disorders that can be selected for too. I began to wonder if there’s a gene for migraines...

Anyway, two things stuck out for me in this article. One was this quote: “One in every 40 Ashkenazic women carries the BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations…” So, no wonder I kept getting asked by oncologists if I was Ashkenazi! I don’t have the BRCA gene but wonder if the gene I do have will be discovered one day. The other quote that was interesting to me: “The sages say that the soul enters the embryo on its 40th day. Therefore, days old embryos, comprising a few cells, are not considered human beings under Jewish law… This is in total contrast to the status of a 9-week-old fetus, the earliest that prenatal diagnosis can be performed; it would be halakhically problematic to terminate the pregnancy at this stage of development. Producing mutation-free babies with a healthy future was not only permitted…but actually preferred.” (..by one of the Orthodox women that they interviewed.)

They discussed the fears people have about this technology giving people the opportunity to create "designer babies" and then ended the article with: “But if designer babies are understood to be children free from devastating inherited disease, it is a technology to embrace.”

So I hope you found that as enlightening as I did. This is my feeling-completely-normal week and so I thought I’d use this energy to write about Hadassah and the work that they do.