Printed from: https://archive.cmf.org.uk/advocacy/pressrelease/?id=29
Published: 21st July 2004
The Christian Medical Fellowship has criticised the expected ruling by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to further relaxing the rules governing 'designer babies' to allow more screening and embryo selection.
The ruling will grant a request by a doctor to select an embryo for a Northern Ireland couple to produce a child who will be a blood match with their son, who suffers from a potentially fatal rare blood disorder.
CMF General Secretary Peter Saunders said, “No parent would fail to understand the desire to do everything possible to help a sick child; but such a relaxation of the rules will take us down a slippery slope where designer embryos will be created and destroyed for increasingly trivial reasons.
“The case of Joshua Fletcher, from Moira, County Down, crosses a line because in finding an embryo that could go on to become a blood stem cell donor, other normal embryos will be discarded purely because they are of the wrong tissue type.
“There is no doubt that the blood disorder Diamond-Blackfan Anaemia (DBA) is a serious and potentially fatal condition. However, current treatment using steroids, transfusion and chelation has made possible a median survival of over 30 years for DBA sufferers and treatments are improving all the time. Bone marrow transplant is also not without significant risk. But this sort of information rarely finds its way into the media's version of the story.
“Embryos are human beings worthy of the utmost respect and should not be treated as a means to an end. It also cannot be in the best interests of any donor child, however much they are subsequently loved, to be created for the primary purpose of providing transplant material for somebody else.
“The HFEA must guard against going beyond its remit. It should not be tinkering in this way with the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act. A proper parliamentary review is needed.”
Steven Fouch (CMF Head of Communications) 020 7234 9668
Alistair Thompson on 07970 162 225
Christian Medical Fellowship (CMF) was founded in 1949 and is an interdenominational organisation with over 5,000 doctors, 900medical and nursing students and 300 nurses and midwives as members in all branches of medicine, nursing and midwifery. A registered charity, it is linked to over 100 similar bodies in other countries throughout the world.
CMF exists to unite Christian healthcare professionals to pursue the highest ethical standards in Christian and professional life and to increase faith in Christ and acceptance of his ethical teaching.
