'Designer baby' plans spark row

Some argue current policies are inconsistent and confusing

Plans to relax "designer baby" rules to allow more screening and selection of embryos have been welcomed by medics but condemned by pro-life groups.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) may alter its rules on creating babies to help sick siblings.

It will consider the case of a Northern Ireland boy with a rare blood disorder who cannot get cells from his family.

Anti-abortion charity Life labelled the HFEA "feeble" and said the plans are "another move down the slippery slope".

But the British Medical Association (BMA) has given its approval to the proposed changes.

Dr Michael Wilks, who chairs the BMA's medical ethics committee, told BBC News that there would be no free-for-all.

He said: "Yes it is relaxing the principles, but we're talking about a very contained clinical situation, not about a free-for-all.

We only want to give our son the best chance for a cure for a condition which could take his life Joe Fletcher Father of baby Joshua

"I think the absolute key to this is the fact that this technology is regulated by the most efficient regulatory body in the world."

Dr Mohamed Taranissi, the director of London's Assisted Reproduction Gynaecology Centre, is pursuing a rule change in a bid to help two-year-old Joshua Fletcher, from Moira, County Down.

Joshua has a potentially fatal blood disorder called Diamond Blackfan anaemia (DBA), which can be treated by using stem cells to stimulate his body to produce healthy red blood cells.

Neither his parents, Joe and Julie, nor his five-year-old brother Adam are close enough matches to give him the stem cells he needs.

But IVF technology could be used to create a baby who can provide these cells.

Risk

The plan would be to create up to 12 embryos through IVF treatment. Before implantation the embryos would be screened to find out which has the right genes.

"We only want to give our son the best chance for a cure," Joshua's father, Joe Fletcher, said earlier this year.

Dr Taranissi believes his application will be very hard to turn down

The HFEA has previously ruled that if the level of risk to the newly-created child cannot be quantified, then it is not acceptable to push ahead with its creation.

Dr Taranissi said: "We are already screening embryos for serious genetic problems... I don't see the difference. What we are trying to do is find an embryo that is a match for a seriously ill child."

Case of the Hashmi family

HFEA chairman Suzi Leather said the authority was looking at its policy in preparation for the government's review of conception and human embryo and fertilisation laws.

"The HFEA operates in a fast moving area of science so it is important that it continues to keep all its policies under constant review," she said.

As the parent of a child who died from a genetic disorder I would not have considered giving birth to another child in the hope of saving the first one Isabel, Yorkshire Have Your Say

On Wednesday it will look at issues surrounding sperm, egg and embryo donation, pre-implantation tissue typing and assessing a child's welfare.

Legal, scientific and ethical issues will also be examined.

But Prof Jack Scarisbrick, national chairman of Life, said that alternative methods need to be found.

He said: "The HFEA is a feeble, unprincipled group. They will say yes to these plans and it will be another move down the slippery slope.

"It can never be right to manufacture human beings to repair other human beings."