BRCA1 Testing offers hope for thousands.
Vivienne Parry writing in The Times under the heading ‘Why cancerAbnormal, uncontrolled cell division resulting in a malignant tumour that may invade surrounding tissues or spread to distant parts of the body. screeningA way to identify people who may have a certain condition, among a group of people who may or may not seem to is a difficult decision for parents’ says, “Pre-implantation geneticRelating to the genes, the basic units of genetic material. diagnosisThe process of determining which condition a patient may have. (PGD) is not something that parents embark on lightly or for trivial reasons. For each potentially risky and emotionally draining procedure undertaken, there is only a one-in-four chance that an unaffected baby will be born. Put more starkly, three out of four attempts will end in failure.”
Fertility expert Adrian Lower responds saying: “I would say that although testing for and, hopefully eliminating the BRCA1 geneThe basic unit of genetic material carried on chromosomes. will not guarantee that a woman will not develop breast cancer in the future, it will certainly reduce her risk of developing the disease from 80% to around 10%. For families that have seen several generations of women lost to the disease it is an attractive prospect, and certainly one I would chose for myself or my daughter. Which is not to say that children with the breast cancer gene are valued less or have any less right to be born. As a parent, I would wish to do anything I possibly could to protect a child from developing such a condition.
