THE advent of a new way of screening embryos for disease will help thousands of families like Linda Ball’s, in which mutated genes have caused a cascade of suffering through several generations.

Though Mrs Ball does not suffer from the condition herself, she has lived with Duchenne muscular dystrophy for her whole life. As a girl she watched her older brother Vaun die from it at the age of 18, and she is now watching again as her son Daniel, 5, fights the same disease.

Mrs Ball, from Daventry, Northamptonshire, is a carrier of the rogue gene that causes the condition, but only when it is inherited by boys. Though the test comes too late for Daniel, she is delighted that it could one day give her 12-month-old daughter Helena healthy children.

When Mrs Ball, 37, and her husband Steven, 38, decided to start a family they planned to have a prenatal sex test with a view to having an abortion if the foetus was male.

“As soon as I got pregnant with Daniel, though, I knew I couldn’t possibly go through with the test,” she said. “I just couldn’t bring myself to consider having an abortion when there was a child growing inside me.”

Mrs Ball said that she would consider the test if she wanted more children, but she is most excited about the possibilities for Helena: there is a 50-50 chance that she is also a carrier. “I’m a strong believer that everybody is entitled to make their own choices, and she now has a real choice.”

While she accepts that some people will have ethical objections to screening in this way, she feels it is different to an abortion. “When you know Duchenne, and know that my little boy has a life expectancy of about 20, and is going to have a lot of pain and suffering, it makes things different.”

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