Proposals to allow British parents having fertility treatment to choose the sex of their unborn baby split an influential group of lawmakers on Thursday, reigniting the debate over “designer babies”.

Couples should be able to decide the gender of the embryo being implanted to balance out families, parliament’s cross-party Science and Technology Committee said in a report.

But half of the committee’s 11 members rejected the findings as “unbalanced and light on ethics”.

Critics say sex selection would turn unborn babies into consumer items and could pave the way for parents choosing other characteristics such as hair or eye colour.

“On balance we find no adequate justification for prohibiting the use of sex selection for family balancing,” the report concluded.

But lawmakers added: “The use and destruction of embryos does raise ethical issues and there are grounds for caution.”

The onus should be on opponents of sex selection for social reasons to show harm from its use, the report said.

The committee said Britain’s fertility regulator - the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) - had “no role” in determining how an embryo is screened before being implanted into a woman’s womb and should lose its powers.

The report, which makes recommendations into the future of Britain’s 15-year-old fertility laws, also said “taboo” research, such as implanting human cells into animals, should be considered, subject to regulation.

Under current law, sex selection is allowed if there is a risk of gender-linked disease such as muscular dystrophy or haemophilia.

Several recent cases have tested those legal boundaries and provoked a heated ethical debate on the merits and pitfalls of embryo selection.

START OF A NEW ERA?

Committee chairman Ian Gibson, of the ruling Labour Party, denied the report backed the creation of designer babies.

“We are looking at the regulation of new technologies,” he told Reuters. “We back proper investigation into the sex selection process.”

But five parliamentarians on the committee rebelled.

“We believe this report is unbalanced, light on ethics, goes too far in the direction of deregulation and is too dismissive of public opinion and much of the evidence,” they said.

Opponents of gender selection say it will inevitably open a new era of parents choosing babies’ other characteristics.

“Social sex selection should not be allowed, because it turns children into consumer items and allows gender stereotypes to determine who gets born,” said Dr. David King, director of campaign group Human Genetics Alert.

“It will throw the door to designer babies wide open.”

Anti-cloning group Comment on Reproductive Ethics compared gender selection to the world of designer babies envisioned in Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel “Brave New World”.

But Suzi Leather, chair of the HFEA, said the committee had made “a number of bold and challenging recommendations”.

The report also called for a review of abortion law, a topic that recently hit the headlines, with some religious leaders calling for the issue to be central to an expected May election.

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See also:
Hemophilia A
Hemophilia B
Parahemophilia