From the ArcaMax Publishing, Health & Fitness Newsletter:
http://www.arcamax.com/news/healthtips/s-629684-605294
WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Cancer genetics experts say a case in which cancer
was transmitted from a Japanese mother to her fetus is extremely rare
and therefore no cause for alarm.
The case was reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences. The paper documented that an 11-month-old girl was found to
have a tumor with a genetic signature identical to a cancer detected
in her mother.
Robert Weinberg, director of the MIT Ludwig Center for Cancer
Research, told ABC News he is concerned about news stories about the
case.
"They are creating alarms in people who will come to believe that
cancer is contagious and that this transmission from mother to fetus
of cancer represents a process that is common enough for the general
public to learn about," said Weinberg, a top expert in cancer
genetics.
There have been an estimated 30 suspected cases of cancer being
similarly transmitted during the past 100 years, ABC reported, but the
current case is the first in which the cancer in the baby conclusively
originated with the mother.
Weinberg said the odds of mother-to-child cancer transmission are less
than one in a million.
Mel Greaves, a professor of cell biology at the Institute of Cancer
Research in Sutton, England, is the lead author of the study.
In a release, he stressed similar cases of transmission are
"exceedingly rare and the chances of any pregnant woman with cancer
passing it on to her child are remote."