LONDON, April 28: Britain’s highest court ruled on Thursday that the creation of so-called “designer babies” to treat siblings with genetic disorders was lawful. In a unanimous decision, the Law Lords upheld an Appeal Court judgement in April 2003 which overturned a ban on the use of IVF fertility treatment to help save the life of a terminally-ill boy.

The boy’s parents, Raj and Shahana Hashmi, did go ahead with the controversial treatment to produce a sibling, hoping to have a baby with the same tissue type as their son Zain in order to treat his rare blood disorder.

Their attempt failed tragically when Mrs Hashmi, 38, suffered a miscarriage.

The case was taken to the Law Lords by a campaigning group, Comment on Reproductive Ethics (CORE), which argued that the whole concept of “designer babies” was against English law.

In their ruling, the five-judge panel — who heard the case last month — ruled that the practice of tissue typing to create babies to help siblings could be authorised by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. Set up under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990, the authority has the power to issue licences to create or keep an embryo.

It granted a licence permitting the treatment in the Hashmi family’s case.

However, it was challenged by Josephine Quintavalle, the founder of CORE, who initially succeeded in getting the High Court to rule that it had no power to grant the licence.

The Hashmis, from Leeds in central England, were forced to fight a long legal battle for the treatment, which they believe is the only hope for their six-year-old son.

Zain had been born with beta thalassaemia major, a serious and potentially fatal genetic disorder. His body does not produce sufficient red blood cells, and he must take a mix of drugs daily and needs regular blood transfusions to stay alive.

His parents wanted him to undergo stem cell treatment, using umbilical cord blood taken from a baby that they would produce using IVF treatment and specially selected at the embryo stage so that its tissue matched Zain’s.

Lord Leonard Hoffman, giving the lead judgment, said Mrs Hashmi had twice conceived naturally in the hope of giving birth to a child whose umbilical blood could provide stem cells for Zain.

On the first attempt the foetus was found to have beta thalassaemia major and she had an abortion. On the second occasion she gave birth to a child whose tissue turned out not to be compatible.

Mr Hoffman said: “There is a way to save the Hashmi family from having to play dice with conception.”

This involved removing a single cell from a newly-fertilised IVF embryo and test it for genetic disorders in a process called Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD).

“Mrs Hashmi, for example, would have been spared having to have her foetus carrying beta thalassaemia major aborted if the embryo had been created by IVF and the disorder diagnosed by PGD.”—AFP