Norah O'Donnell finds her genetic match

When CBS News correspondent Norah O'Donnell first looked into genetic testing, she says she was fascinated to learn how medicine has shifted from treating illness to preventing it.

"I got interested in this story because I come from a family of doctors, and the current state of medicine is we treat disease, but what if you could prevent disease at conception or at preconception?" O'Donnell tells 60 Minutes Overtime. "That technology exists today."

As O'Donnell reports this week on 60 Minutes, parents have the option to breed out some potentially deadly genetic diseases, like cancer, from their bloodline.

That process is called preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or PGD, and it enables parents to screen embryos in a lab for genetic diseases and then hand select the ones which appear healthy to implant into the womb.

While reporting on PGD, O'Donnell interviewed a woman named Melinda, who was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 29. For Melinda and her husband Matt, the idea of their children potentially developing cancer was not a risk they were willing to take.

(At their request, Matt and Melinda's last name was not disclosed in the story, in an effort to protect their privacy.)

"Chemotherapy for Melinda was not a gray experience; mastectomies were not a gray experience. That was very black and white," Matt told O'Donnell. "And so for us, personally, there was no question that this is something that we needed to do."

Finding a couple willing to discuss their PGD experience, was a challenge, says producer Tanya Simon.

"We made a lot of phone calls, we called fertility clinics, we called genetic testing centers -- and we got a lot of noes because it's very, very personal. You're giving a lot of yourself. It's your family. It's your family's history."

And as personal as the subject is, it is also controversial.

"I'm sure for some people, they'll say, 'Having children is a gamble.' They might not have a breast cancer gene, but anything else could happen to them," Simon says. "So I think some people feel strongly about letting Mother Nature take her course."

On the flip side, such a measure, especially for Matt and Melinda, meant the power to prevent their future generations from inheriting the BRCA1 gene mutation, which can cause numerous forms of cancer.

"For somebody like Melinda, she's changed her blood line," Simon says. "Her kids no longer have that mutation so they can't pass it onto their kids, who can't pass it onto their kids. She's stopped it in its tracks."

For Melinda, there were other members of her family to consider. The genetic mutation came from her father's side, and so, Melinda says, she felt obligated to inform each member of her family of the possible genetic mutation they may also carry.

One of Melinda's cousins, Rachel, decided to get tested, and when she found out that she too carried the BRCA1 mutation, she decided to do something drastic: She got a prophylactic mastectomy and a hysterectomy to prevent the possibility of developing cancer.

But genetic testing isn't cheap. For Matt and Melinda, the entire IVF and PGD process cost $16,000.

But as Simon points out, most breakthrough technologies are very expensive for consumers at first.

"If you don't have the money to pay for this or you don't have access to foundations or assistance then it's not for you. Yet."

Beyond PGD, Norah O'Donnell reported on another technology that enables parents to create genetically healthy "babies" -- without creating any actual embryos. They are known as "digital babies" at a company called GenePeeks.

By combining DNA samples from two individuals, the company is able to calculate the risk of that couple conceiving a child with any one of 500 severe recessive pediatric disorders.

O'Donnell participated in the screening process and with one vial of saliva, geneticists at GenePeeks were able to sort through her DNA, and that of a potential sperm donor, to find out if they were a good "genetic match."

"I mated digitally with a hundred men who had registered at the Manhattan sperm bank, and what they found was that they would probably eliminate about 25 percent of them immediately because the likelihood of me and that potential match from the Manhattan sperm bank would probably have some genetic disorder," O'Donnell says.

O'Donnell was also able to narrow down that list even more by looking at a series of criteria, including personality traits.

It all begs the question: Where is the line?

"There are many people raising the question about whether this is playing God," O'Donnell says. "If science gives you the ability to create embryos or life, that puts a lot of choice in the hands of parents, [to select] which embryos are worthy of turning into a baby."

The above video was produced for 60 Minutes Overtime by Magalie Laguerre-Wilkinson, Craig Crawford and Evie Salomon. It was originally published on October 26, 2014.