The BMA has supported the idea of preimplantation selection of embryos to help to treat a seriously ill sibling.
The BMA's annual representative meeting endorsed the judgment in a recent High Court appeal in the Hashmi case (12 April 2003, p 782) when it was agreed that cord blood from the selected baby would be harvested for bone marrow stem cells to help a brother who would otherwise die.
“We need to have this facility to use this technique when it is needed,” Dr Michael Wilks, chairman of the medical ethics committee, told the meeting. But he emphasised that each case had to be treated on an individual basis.
The proposer of the motion, Dr Peter Dangerfield from Liverpool, pointed to the dramatic increases in medical knowledge which had produced more ethical dilemmas.
But did a caring profession have the right to deny treatment to people if it was scientifically possible, he asked.
The life of the unborn child, whose cells were being used, would not be interfered with. The stem cells would be used to save another person who was under sentence of death. If the technique was not supported there was a risk of it going underground or of patients going abroad to be treated where there would be no governmental or ethical control.
But Dr Gregory Gardner, a GP in Birmingham, said the matter was a question of choice: “Should the role of public policy be to go along with unfettered public choice or should it include limiting choices so we would not be tempted to make bad decisions?” He believed the selection of certain embryos and the destruction of others was “eugenics with a vengeance.”