A COUPLE were given the go-ahead by the House of Lords yesterday to produce a so-called “designer baby” with the aim of treating a sibling with a genetic disorder.

The law lords’ decision upheld a Court of Appeal ruling in April 2003 that overturned a ban on the use of controversial fertility treatment to help to save the life of a terminally ill boy.

After that ruling Raj and Shahana Hashmi went ahead with treatment to produce a sibling for Zain, hoping to give birth to a child with the same tissue type as their son, so that his rare blood disorder could be treated. Tragically Mrs Hashmi had a miscarriage.

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

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

The authority granted a licence allowing Mrs Hashmi’s treatment but was challenged by Quintavalle. She was successful at the High Court, which ruled that the authority had no power to grant the licence.

Mrs Hashmi, 38, and her husband, who are from Leeds, were forced to fight a long legal battle for the treatment, which they still believe is the only hope for their son, aged six. He was born with beta thalassaemia major, a serious and potentially fatal genetic disorder. His body does not produce enough red blood cells: he has to take a cocktail of drugs daily and needs regular transfusions to survive.

His parents hope he will have treatment using blood from the umbilical cord of a baby, whom they they would like to produce through IVF treatment. The embryo would be selected so that the tissue matched Zain’s.

Dismissing the challenge, the law lords held that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority had done nothing illegal by giving the go-ahead for the tissue typing.

Lord Hoffmann said: “There has never been any suggestion that the authority acted unreasonably in granting a licence. The case has always been that it had no power to do so. In my opinion it did and I would therefore dismiss the appeal.”

Yesterday Shahana Hashmi welcomed the ruling as the start of a new era. “It’s nice to know that society has now embraced the technology to cure the sick and take away the pain. It has been a long and hard battle for all the family and we have finally heard the news we wanted to hear,” she said.

“We feel this ruling marks a new era and we are happy to move forwards now. We hope and pray that we get what we need for Zain. He has been our inspiration throughout all of this. We haven’t got the words to say how much we have appreciated everyone’s support through this time. ‘Thank you’ doesn’t seem enough.”

Dr Simon Fishel, the Managing Director of Care Fertility Group and the Hashmi’s fertility doctor, said: “I trust that a line has now been drawn whereby families, with guidance from their medical practioners, can make their own choices without extraordinarily long and compromising legal battles.

“Now it is time to move on. I would like to pay tribute to the Hashmi family who were prepared to fight through their pain.”

Alison Murdoch, the chairwoman of the British Fertility Society, said: “For any parents to go through what the Hashmis have been through to help their sick child proves that they are wonderful parents.

“Therefore the state should back out of this and leave these decisions to the people best able to make them — the families and their doctors.”

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