The UK's High Court has banned the screening of embryos to help couples conceive healthy children who would also be able to provide cord blood to save the lives of seriously ill siblings.
The surprise ruling, which concluded a case brought by pro-life campaigners, will prevent Raj and Shahana Hashmi from continuing with their attempts to conceive a child who would be a potential cord blood donor for their son Zain, who has beta-thalassaemia. The couple became the first family in the UK to try and use the technique, after receiving the go-ahead from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) last February. Mrs Hashmi, who was due to undergo her third IVF attempt after Christmas, told a newspaper: 'These people could destroy not just Zain's right to life but that of hundreds of other children'.
The court challenge was brought by Josephine Quintavalle, of the pressure group Comment on Reproductive Ethics (CORE). She called the procedure 'ethically objectionable', and said that it was for Parliament to make decisions of such magnitude. Mr Justice Maurice Kay ruled that the HFEA had acted beyond its legal powers in granting IVF clinics licences to carry out tissue typing to select matched donor {GLINK embryos. He went on to express his great sympathy for the Hashmis, and gave the HFEA permission to appeal against the ruling, saying that the case raised matters of the utmost importance.
In a brief press release issued before Christmas, the HFEA said it was disappointed with the decision and that it would appeal. Juliet Tizzard, director of Progress Educational Trust, said that it was a sign of the failure of pro-life groups to win public and parliamentary support for their view that they were 'now using legal technicalities to buy public attention.' Labour MP Ian Gibson, chairman of the Science and Technology Select Committee, backed the use of the technique in extreme cases, but said the law needed tightening to prevent it being abused.
Sources and References
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A child condemned to die by unreasoning ideologues
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Court rules out attempt to create designer baby
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