Law Lordsback 'designer babie'

The House of Lords ruled today that the creation of so-called "designer babies" to treat siblings with genetic disorders was lawful.

The test case centred on an Appeal Court judgment in April 2003 which overturned a ban on the use of controversial fertility treatment to help save the life of a terminally-ill boy.

Raj and Shahana Hashmi did go ahead with the treatment to produce a sibling for Zain, hoping to have a baby with the same tissue type as their son to treat his rare blood disorder.

Tragically Mrs Hashmi had a miscarriage.

Then Josephine Quintavalle and her campaigning group, Comment on Reproductive Ethics, took the case to the Law Lords, claiming that the whole concept of designer babies was against the law.

But today five Law Lords who heard the case in March ruled unanimously that the practice of tissue typing to create babies to help siblings could be authorised by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority.

This body was set up under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 and issues a licence to create or keep an embryo.

The authority did grant a licence permitting the treatment in Mrs Hashmi's case, but it was challenged by Josephine Quintavalle, who was originally successful at the High Court which ruled that the authority had no power to grant the licence.

The 38-year-old-mother and her husband, from Leeds, were forced to fight a long legal battle for the treatment, which they believe is the only hope for their six-year-old son.

He was born with beta thalassaemia major, a serious and potentially fatal genetic disorder.

His body does not produce sufficient red blood cells and he has to take a cocktail of drugs daily and needs regular blood transfusions to stay alive.

His parents want him to undergo stem cell treatment using umbilical cord blood taken from a baby they would produce using IVF treatment that had been especially selected at embryo stage so that the tissue matched Zain's.