Law Lords back saviour siblings ruling 29/4/05. By the Public Health Genetics Unit The UK Law Lords have upheld an earlier court decision that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) acted lawfully in permitting the Hashmi family to use pre-implantation tissue-typing to select tissue-matched embryos for their son.

Zain Hashmi has the serious genetic disorder beta thalassaemia major, requiring regular blood transfusions and drug treatment to keep him alive. His parents received permission from the HFEA to proceed with treatment to select embryos that were a tissue match for Zain, so that stem cells from the newborn child's umbilical cord could be used for transplantation into Zain, potentially curing him.

His parents went ahead with the treatment, although thus far Mrs Hashmi has miscarried all the babies implanted after tissue selection.

The High Court had originally imposed a ban on the Hashmis' treatment in December 2002, but this was overturned in the Court of Appeal in 2003.

News: Appeal Court judgement in the Hashmi case, 23/5/03

The group Comment on Reproductive Ethics (CORE) then asked the House of Lords to examine the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (1990) to determine whether such tissue-typing was legal.

On 28 April 2005, five Law Lords ruled unanimously that the HFEA had acted "lawfully and appropriately" in granting a licence to the Hashmis, as there was no legal basis for limiting the authority's power to permit screening of embryos for genetic disorders.

Article courtesy of the Public Health Genetics Unit .

Image credit: Anthea Sieveking