In the news

The Law Lords have upheld an earlier court decision that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) acted lawfully in permitting the Hashmi family to use pre-implantation tissue-typing to select tissue matched embryos for their son (see BBC news report). Zain Hashmi suffers from the serious genetic disorder beta thalassaemia major, requiring regular blood transfusions and drug treatment to keep him alive; his parents received permission from the HFEA to proceed with treatment to select embryos that were a tissue match for Zain, so that stem cells from the newborn child’s umbilical cord could be used for transplantation into Zain, and potentially cure him. The couple went ahead with the treatment, although thus far Mrs Hashmi has miscarried all the babies implanted after tissue selection. The High Court had originally imposed a ban on the Hashmis’ treatment in December 2002, but this was overturned in the Court of Appeal in 2003. The group Comment on Reproductive Ethics (CORE) then asked the House of Lords to examine the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (1990) to determine whether such tissue-typing was legal. Five Law Lords yesterday ruled unanimously that the HFEA had acted “lawfully and appropriately” in granting a licence to the Hashmis, as there was no legal basis for limiting the authority's power to permit screening of embryos for genetic disorders.

Josephine Quintavalle of CORE commented: “The Law Lords have in effect stated that unless there are specific prohibitions to the contrary, the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority (HFEA) can do whatever it pleases. This is not simply about babies being created in the laboratory as tissue matches, but the creation of babies of the right sex, hair colour, intelligence, and so on. Whatever the mother deems to be suitable in an embryo is what she can ask for, according to today’s interpretation of the law…This judgment effectively endorses the terrifying designer baby scenario which our country rightly abhors”. Law Lord Brown of Eaton-Under-Heywood said that: "In the unlikely event that the authority were to propose licensing genetic selection for purely social reasons, Parliament would surely act at once to remove that possibility" (see Telegraph report). The HFEA stated that they were "pleased with the clarity that this ruling brings for patients".