Kerry Andrew, 27, was not surprised to learn she carried the cancer-causing gene BRCA1.

At the age of seven, she had seen her mother die of breast cancer. Her grandmother later died of ovarian cancer, having already had a mastectomy after developing breast cancer.

Three years ago, after being tested for the gene, she had a preventative mastectomy, which reduced the risk of her contracting breast cancer from 80 per cent to 5 per cent.

“I didn’t want to go through what I saw my mum go through,” she said.

But she still insists that if she had children she would not go through the process of screening the embryos. “If I was to remove embryos before they were born it would be like saying they shouldn’t have been born in the first place.

“I had a healthy life up to the age of 24, a couple of years recovery and I’ve been healthy since. [Carrying BRCA1] doesn’t mean you’re automatically going to die.

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