The Hindu : Couple have 'designer baby'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jun 20, 2003

International

International

Couple have 'designer baby'

London June 19. British couple who went to the United States for embryo selection to ensure having a baby with the right genetic match to save their four-year-old son have been successful, press reports today said.

British authorities had denied Jayson and Michelle Whitaker the procedure required to ensure the new baby would have the right match to save Charlie (4), who has Diamond Blackfan anaemia. He needs regular transfusions and painful injections five nights a week.

The new baby, James, was delivered by Caesarean section in a hospital in Sheffield in the north of England on Monday. The British press termed him a ``designer baby''.

The Whitakers went to the Reproductive Genetics Institute in Chicago where doctors checked embryos conceived in vitro to ensure the correct match and then implanted the embryo in Michelle (31).

Mr. Jayson (33), a business manager told the Daily Mail: ``All we did was change the odds from a one-in-four chance of a tissue match to a 98 per cent chance.

``There was no selection on the basis of colour of eyes or hair or sex. There are blood tests being carried out now to see if Jamie is a perfect tissue match and we will know in a few days, but at the moment we don't want to think about the stem-cell blood,'' he said.

The vital stem cells for helping Charlie have already been collected from Jamie's umbilical cord. Tests will also be carried out to determine if the new baby has the same anaemia condition as his brother. Last year, the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority refused permission for the embryo selection procedure to be carried out in Britain, although, according to the Mail, Britain's state-run National Health Service offered the couple ``a crude alternative involving multiple abortions''. The HFEA said it was acceptable to test and select embryos to prevent the birth of a baby with a genetic disease, but not to select them to help another child in terms of current British legislation.

DPA

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