Court reaffirms test-tube screening

LONDON -- Couples can screen their test-tube embryos to ensure the baby's tissue provides a match to help cure a sick sibling, an appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The ruling by the Court of Appeal in London is the latest step in a 16-month-long legal battle between Britain's fertility regulator and an anti-abortion group, which claims such screening could lead to the creation of designer babies for spare body parts.

In December 2001, Britain's Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority said couples undergoing in vitro fertilization, who already were having their embryos screened for serious hereditary diseases, could also get a license to have them tested for tissue matching to save the life of a sibling.

The anti-abortion group Comment On Reproductive Ethics went to the high court to block the licenses, arguing that parliament alone should decide on such issues.

At the center of the legal wrangling were Shahana and Raj Hashmi, a couple striving to conceive a fifth child as an umbilical cord blood donor for their seriously ill 4-year-old, Zain. They had been granted the first license under the 2001 ruling.

But the high court ruled in December 2002 that the embryology authority had no legal power to license embryo selection by "tissue typing" to help sick siblings. That ruling put on hold the Hashmis' license and the embryology regulator appealed.

During the appeal Shahana Hashmi made an impassioned plea to the judges in a bid to help save her child's life.

"Any child who is brought into our home will be fiercely protected. We don't wish any harm to our children," she said. "We would like you to please consider when making a decision that our son will die a terrible, painful death if we are not given permission to save him."

She showed the judges photographs of her son lying in a hospital bed.

The appeals panel said Tuesday simply that it was overturning the high court ruling. Details were not expected to be available until later, but the ruling means the Hashmis can continue with their quest for a sibling to treat their ailing son.

During in vitro fertilization, several embryos are created but only two or three are implanted in the womb. In some cases, the embryos are tested for certain inheritable genetic defects and only those free of abnormal genes are implanted.

The embryology authority gave the Hashmis, of Leeds in northern England, permission to add another test to make sure tissue from their next child would be a suitable match for Zain.

Neither the couple nor their four other children are bone marrow matches for Zain, who suffers from the rare blood disorder thalassaemia and is expected to die without a transplant. Stem cells taken from the baby's umbilical cord at birth could replace Zain's bone marrow.

"Whether or not we succeed, this decision has given Zain and us new hope," Shahana Hashmi said after the ruling.

The Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority is the only regulator of its kind in the world. Its origins are rooted in a passionate debate in Britain over reproductive ethics that erupted after the birth of the world's first test-tube baby in London in 1978.

The agency keeps tight control over the practices of all fertility clinics and over embryo research.

Cases of embryo selection for matching tissue for sick siblings have occurred in the United States, where private fertility clinics are unregulated.

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On the Net:

Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, http://www.hfea.gov.uk/