Hospital looking to create `designer baby'

A hospital may be about to undertake the nation's first screening of an embryo in order to tailor a baby to save another child with a congenital illness.

Su I-ning (蘇怡寧), a physician at National Taiwan University Hospital's (NTUH) Medical Genetics Department, said in a telephone interview yesterday that the department is ready to help a young couple conceive a healthy baby using embryo gene screening technology.

This will nearly guarantee that the baby's Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) will be complimentary to that of his or her sibling who is suffering from Fanconi's anemia, a rare genetic disorder.

Su the couple sought help at the hospital after being unable to find a suitable bone marrow donor who could help treat their child.

Using embryo gene screening technique, the chance of having a child with bone marrow identical to the sick child's will rise from 25 to 90 percent, he said.

According to Su, the gene screening would be conducted after the externally fertilized egg had developed into an embryo.

If there are no genetic defects in the embryo's DNA and its HLA matches the sick child's, the embryo would then be implanted into the mother's womb, giving the couple the chance to give birth to a "designer baby," according to Su.

He added that the hospital has consulted the Department of Health (DOH) on the matter, but that so far, the DOH had not provided any explicit response.

"We would like to let the DOH know that infertile couples are not the only people who need ectogenesis," Su said.

Su the Taipei Times the hospital has everything ready to carry out the procedure, but it will wait for the DOH to respond before taking the next step -- embryo implantation.

"We have put the ball in the the DOH's court, now we are waiting its response," Su said.

New reproduction techniques could be used to help other patients in need of bone marrow transplants, Su said.

Although the new reproductive technology seems to offer hope for families with children affected by genetic disorders, it in fact evades legal issues in some sense.

Even though the government has been drawing up the Draft Governing Artificial Reproduction since 1995, it has not yet been passed due to the controversy over surrogate mothering.

The Legislative Yuan completed the first reading of the draft this April.

Even if the draft were passed, it does not contain regulations for embryo gene screening for couples who are able to have children.

The Bureau of Health Promotion's maternal, infant and genetic health division director Su Shu-chen (蘇淑貞) said that although there are no regulations for such cases so far, "we need to take the original spirit of the draft into consideration."

She said that the draft was proposed only in order to help couples who were having difficulty conceiving.

Lin Chin-li (林錦麗), the Department of Health's director of the division governing biotechnology and organ transplant, also said that the new technology involves ethical issues.

Lin medical institutions have to contact the relevant government agencies when there were "justified grounds" for an artificial reproduction procedure, according to the Regulations for Ectogenesis Technology. "But the definition of `justified grounds' is very vague," she added.

Su I-ning said that he realized that the creation of "designer babies" remains a contentious issue.

The genetics department planned to tackle ethical issues by offering potential parents counseling and gene diagnosis after a baby is born, he said.