The brave new world gets braver, and scarier, every day.

From the world of medicine:

The first child in Britain known to have been screened as an embryo to ensure she did not carry a cancer gene was born Friday, a spokesman for University College London told CNN.

Genetic screening allows lab-fertilized embryos to be tested for genes likely to lead to later health problems.

Genetic screening allows lab-fertilized embryos to be tested for genes likely to lead to later health problems.

Her embryo was screened in a lab days after conception to check for the BRCA-1 gene, linked to breast and ovarian cancer.

People with the gene are known to have a 50-80 percent chance of developing breast or ovarian cancer in their lifetimes.

British newspapers have dubbed the girl the “cancer-free” baby.

“This little girl will not face the specter of developing this genetic form of breast cancer or ovarian cancer in her adult life,” said Paul Serhal, a consultant at University College London Hospital and Medical Director of the Assisted Conception Unit.

“The parents will have been spared the risk of inflicting this disease on their daughter. The lasting legacy is the eradication of the transmission of this form of cancer that has blighted these families for generations.”

Yet not everyone is thrilled with the idea of testing embryos for genes that could cause health problems later in life, a process known as preimplanatation genetic diagnosis.

“This is not a cure for breast cancer,” said Josephine Quintavalle, co-founder of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, which describes itself as group that focuses on ethical dilemmas related to reproduction.

What do you think about testing embryos for gene defects?

“This is simply a mechanism for eliminating the birth of anybody (prone to) the disease,” she said. “It is basically a search-and-kill mechanism.”

She opposes the procedure because embryos found to carry disease-causing genes often are discarded. She says that is essentially murder.

“They will be destroyed,” she said. “They will never be allowed to live.”

Doctors in Britain and elsewhere increasingly test embryos for genes that are certain to cause illnesses such as cystic fibrosis or Huntington’s Disease.

What’s different about the girl born Friday is that she is the first infant known to have been tested in Britain as an embryo for a gene that is merely likely — not certain — to cause disease.

There is more at the CNN link. H/T to Children of God for sending this my way.