Pro-life group mounts legal challenge against `designer babies'

BY SIMON CALDWELL
A LEADING pro-life group has mounted a High Court challenge against the creation of "designer babies".
Comment on Reproductive Ethics (CORE) is contesting the policy decision of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to issue licences to allow embryo selection in IVF by tissue-typing.
The judicial review, which began on Tuesday, was prompted by the case of Zain Hashmi, a boy who needs a bone marrow transplant to help him overcome a potentially fatal blood disorder called thalassaemia.
No suitable donors were found, so doctors proposed a genetically identical brother or sister be created for the purpose, following a decision by the HFEA, a government quango, to change the rules last December. Permission was granted for the Hashmi family to create a donor sibling by IVF in July.
CORE argues that the issue is a legal rather than an ethical one because it says the HFEA does not have the power to issue such licences since its remit was restricted to the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act.
Spokeswoman Josephine Quintavalle said: relationship to the issues at stake in this judicial review hearing, the HFEA has assumed decision-making responsibilities which are the exclusive domain of Parliament and Parliament alone. This must never be allowed to happen. It is an unacceptable erosion of the democratic process and must be halted."
She said: "It is time for the HFEA to be subjected to a thorough investigation and overhaul, and time for Parliament to reclaim its authority in this highly sensitive field of medicine."
She added: "The HFEA is rarely out of the spotlight these days. The public is justifiably concerned at the recent stories of IVF mix-ups and mishaps.
"The HFEA faces huge hurdles to sort out these
massive housekeeping problems, and will have to work very hard to reassure the country that they are capable of the regulatory task entrusted to them by the 1990 Act.
"Given these circumstances alone it is not appropriate for them to take on any extra responsibilities of any kind whatsoever — and they should certainly be dissuaded from getting involved in stem cell regulation or research."
Lawyers for the HFEA argue that there is no basis for saying the disputed procedure is against the law. They claim the human rights of the parents would be infringed in they were denied access to it.