[Schrödinger's Kitty]

BEIJING, April 29 -- Britain's highest court ruled April 28 that it is lawful to create so-called "designer babies" to help cure sick siblings.

The five Law Lords, who heard the case in March, ruled unanimously that tissue typing to create babies to help their siblings could be authorised by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, Britain's reproductive watchdog.

This decision upheld a Court of Appeal ruling in April 2003 that overturned a ban on the use of controversial fertility treatment to help to save the life of a terminally ill boy.

Shahana Hashmi, 38, and her husband were forced to fight a long legal battle for the treatment, which they still believe is the only hope for their son, 6-year-old Zain Hashmi. Zain was born with beta thalassaemia major, a serious and potentially fatal genetic disorder. His body does not produce enough red blood cells: he has to take a cocktail of drugs for 12 hours a day and needs regular transfusions to survive.

Doctors now have the technology to select embryos with perfect tissue for a transplant operation.

Theoretically this would allow the child's parents to create a child with the same tissue type as their son. They could then take stem cells from the new baby's umbilical cord and transplant them into Zain.

Mrs Hashmi welcomed the ruling as the start of a new era. "It's nice to know that society has now embraced the technology to cure the sick and take away the pain. It has been a long and hard battle for all the family and we have finally heard the news we wanted to hear," she said.

Advocates say the procedure will help save desperately ill children. Opponents fear it could go "further down the slippery slope in creating human beings to provide spare parts for another."

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005- ... 893084.htm

This is getting wierd.

[Boondock Saint]

So they are genetically engineering a child to be a reservior for red blood cells?

Brilliant and scary at the same time.

[Schrödinger's Kitty]

The child looks like a cute, big-eared boy.
I wounder how cute is dead 'twin' would have looked. Killing one to save another is no good medicine.

[Boondock Saint]

Whoa whoa ...

One does not need ot end the life of another person to use them as reservior for red blood cells ...

Are they breeding this new human just to end its life? Or will they allow the new human to grow and live and simply as a side note to his life act as a reservior?

[Clansman]

The latter Boon. My wife is a bioethicist and she's well up on this case. The general principle being adopted is that so long as the child to be born is wanted and loved for itself and has a good quality life itself then selecting that child on the grounds of aiding sibblings is to be tolerated, however only on the basis that the cross treatment is uninvasive and does not deminish the quality of life of the donor sibling. No making babies for spare parts except perhaps for placental or umbilicle material.

[Schrödinger's Kitty]

I am not sure, actually. However, going on what the opposers said at the end of the article, I think they are aruging for the slippery slope thing which holds this law creates a precident which would lead to growing humans for medical neccessity.

Who will raise the new child? I thought they would throw it away like an aborted fetus.

[Boondock Saint]

No making babies for spare parts except perhaps for placental or umbilicle material.

Fine then. I am a moral relativist this is true but I will be damned if I will ever support the growing of humans simply for the harvesting of body parts.

If what you say is true Clan then i see it as very interesting and have no problem with it.

[Clansman]

THe harsh reality is though that this principle prevents children with leukemia being saved as bone marrow transplants are very painful and invasive to the donor and so one cannot select a child to be a good bone marrow donor. I don't know if this is right or wrong myself as such transplants are low risk to the donor and they do recover from them. What's your thoughts?

[Boondock Saint]

What's your thoughts?

About the painful bone marrow transplants themselves and breeding humans as a reservior for bone marrow?

Well ... I see it this way ...

- Life is a gift.

- Life is pain.

- I would trade some amount of pain, even severe for the opportunity to live a life.

While it does not seem fair that these humans are raised as reservoirs for another human and must endure pain in turn I would say that in truth the gift of life should more then cover the pain they would feel from their required donations.

Of course you get into a bit of a legal problem telling a citizen that they must donate any part of their body even though they never chose it to be so.

Very very very totalitarian in nature if you ask me.

[Clansman]

But he marrow would be taken from children before they could even talk let alone make informed and legally valid choices. They could not concede to the procedure, it would have to be done without their legal consent. If it was just a matter of selecting a child that would be a suitable donor and then waiting until they could give legal consent for the procedure then I would have no problem with it, but to actually put a young toddler through an horrifically painful but not permanently damaging procedure without their consent, even if it is to save the life of their sibling, I find really hard to swallow on emotional grounds more than anything else. The hypothetical question is would I do it to save my daughter? God what an aweful question, I don't know and I really don't want to find out.

[Boondock Saint]

The hypothetical question is would I do it to save my daughter? God what an aweful question, I don't know and I really don't want to find out.

In truth its just pain and if it is done once at a time when children dont really remember much from anyway then I really see no harm.

[Irish_Lefty]

Clansman it has nothing to do with bone marrow the cells come from umbilical cord which is rarely used anyway except for the harvesting of stem cells.

[Clansman]

Read the whole thread Lefty.

[bradley]

These aren't designer babies they are saviour siblings. There is a considerable difference in the ethics involved.

[Boondock Saint]

These aren't designer babies they are saviour siblings. There is a considerable difference in the ethics involved.

Such a nice way at looking at it. The fact is they would be bred for a purpose, to serve as a reservoir for another human being. Their lives would be one of obligation designated to them by others before they were even born.