- 29 Apr 2005 06:50
#626571
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005- ... 893084.htm
This is getting wierd.
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.