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British court commences consideration of baby case

Britain's top appeals court on Monday began considering whether to allow parents to produce babies whose genetic material would be used to help treat their sick siblings.

The outcome of the five-member Law Lords panel will have a direct impact on six-year-old Zain Hashmi, who suffers from a serious and potentially fatal blood disorder that could be helped by successful stem cell treatment.

But a group called Comment on Reproductive Ethics (CORE) has challenged a British law which approves the biological screening stage of the process, saying it encourages the creation of "designer babies" and turns human beings into commodities.

Zain's parents, Raj and Shahana Hashmi, won an appeal in April 2003 allowing them to conceive a second child through in-vitro fertilization (IVF) whose genetic make-up would match Zain's.

The boy, who suffers from beta thelassaemia major and requires monthly blood infusions and an intensive daily drug regimen, would then undergo stem cell treatment using the newborn's umbilical cord blood and a bone marrow transplant.

The immature stem cells, which later differentiate into the more than 200 different types of cells that make up the various tissues of the body, can be harvested and coaxed into growing replacement tissue that can be transplanted.

CORE, a group which has also campaigned against abortion, has mounted a legal challenge against a British law allowing parents to undertake a first step of genetic screening of an IVF embryo.

"It's making a commodity out of one child for the interest of a third party," CORE founder Josephine Quintavalle told reporters.

"The concept that a baby should be created with this specific purpose [bone marrow donation] in mind goes beyond the comprehension of compassionate and civilized citizens," she said.

Last year Britain's official Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority approved the genetic screening step, known as known as preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), but said the treatment would only be offered to parents of children suffering from very grave conditions that require a compatible cell donor.
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