Printed from: https://www.cmf.org.uk/advocacy/pressrelease/?id=17
Published: 31st March 2003
CMF General Secretary Peter Saunders said, 'No parent would fail to understand the Hashmi's desire to do everything possible to help their sick child; but hard cases make bad law and it is wrong that the BMA and HFEA should be bringing pressure to bear on a case that could well bring in designer babies by the back door without recourse to proper parliamentary debate.
We support Josephine Quintavalle and the Commons' Science and Technology Committee in their conviction the HFEA's original decision to allow IVF technology to produce tissue matched donors for the treatment of children with severe inherited disorders goes beyond its remit.
In pressuring the court to allow pre-implantation diagnosis and embryo selection in order to ensure the birth of tissue-matched donor babies, the HFEA and BMA are we believe pushing for a ruling that is both dangerous and unethical.
It is dangerous because, despite the HFEA's assurance that the procedure will be used only in 'very rare circumstances and under strict controls', the ruling is likely to lead to a slippery slope whereby designer embryos and fetuses can be created and destroyed for more and more trivial reasons. 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 undergoing invasive harvesting procedures to provide transplant material for somebody else.
It is also unethical because the approved procedure involves destroying embryos that fail to fulfil the selection criteria. Whilst it is true that in very rare circumstances, the only way of ensuring that a tissue-matched donor is born, is to use this kind of 'search and destroy' technology, the end of saving a human life never justifies such means. This ruling moves the goalposts even further than before as embryos, which are of the wrong tissue type, but otherwise normal, are to be discarded in order to treat a condition for which other treatment options exist.
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.
