The new measure could lead to babies being created as "spare parts" rather than as human beings in their own right

Additional Reporting By Angy Ghannam, IOL Staff

CAIRO, 22 July (IslamOnline.net) – A British non-departmental government body loosened on Wednesday, July 21, rules on screening human embryos, allowing parents to conceive "designer babies" who can act as genetically-matched donors for their sick siblings, reported a British newspaper on Thursday, July 22.

The new decision immediately triggered warnings from rights groups that such babies could be used as "spare parts".

The Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) decided to relax the rules governing the screening of embryos before they are implanted in the womb, reported The Independent.

Screening, known as preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), would enable doctors to select an embryo resulting from in vitro fertilization that would be a tissue and genetic match for existing children.

Genetic screening, carried out three days after fertilization when embryos have divided into six or 10 cells, is already permitted to eliminate genetic disorders.

The treatment will only be offered to parents of children suffering from very grave conditions that require a compatible cell donor.

The HFEA president, Suzi Leather, said PGD would be allowed only "as a treatment of last resort. It will be incumbent upon doctors to show us that they have looked at all the other available treatment options and that there is no other treatment available for a sick child."

She argued that treatment would "in no way affect" the health of the selected embryos.

"Faced with potential requests from parents who want to save a sick child, the emotional focus is understandably on the child who is ill. Our job is to consider the welfare of the tissue-matched child which will be born."

British newspapers said the treatment would enable parents to have "designer babies," but this was rejected by Alison Murdoch, president of the British Fertility Society.

"The often-used term designer baby is misleading here -- we are not talking about engineering a child to have a certain hair color or aesthetic characteristic," she said.

Last year, the HFEA allowed a couple to have a healthy child whose umbilical cord blood would be a source of stem cells to treat their four-year-old son.

Another couple went to the United States to have a genetically screened baby in a case that was widely commented on in the British press.

Stem cells can develop into the various kinds of cell that make up the human body.

Morally Unacceptable 

"Anti-abortion groups warned the policy change could lead to babies being created as 'spare parts' rather than as human beings in their own right," said The Independent.

They condemned the HFEA ruling and said donor-siblings could be emotionally damaged by the knowledge that they were created to cure their brother or sister.

A spokesman for Life, which campaigns against abortion, cloning and other scientific procedures, said: "To attempt to create another child as a transplant source is not morally acceptable.

"How would this child feel, for example, when he or she discovers that they were brought into the world primarily as a 'spare part' for their elder brother? Human beings - particularly children - must never be used as a means to an end."

The spokesman said this was "nothing more than a form of quality control in early human beings and a commodification of human life."

Sheikh Abdel Khaliq Hasan Ash-Shareef, a prominent Egyptian Muslim scholar, said the procedure is religiously forbidden.

"It will lead to creating a market where babies will turn into a commodity," he told IslamOnline.net.

"Who can control such practices and make sure that there will be no black market that will emerge and function without any regulations or morals," the scholar asked.

"A human being should be dignified, not treated as a spare tool, this is extremely cruel," he said.