Catholic Church warns of designer children

Sydney: The Catholic Church has stirred up a debate over the ethics of using new technology to help produce disease-free babies, and ones that can provide life-saving opportunities for their siblings.

The church is concerned about the implications of the Tasmanian couple case where the doctors had used both IVF and genetic screening to ensure the second child of the couple did not suffer from the genetic disease which affects their only son.

Bishop Anthony Fisher, a health ethics spokesman for the Catholic church, said: "Any technological development that is a project that we control rather than a gift we receive is a concern.

"We are on the verge of an attitude to parenting where parents could plan their children's eye and hair colour, or intelligence and sexuality, and select out any babies that have asthma or a predisposition to heart disease in later life."

“I would say that the most important thing in that situation is that we are a community that will support every parent, including the parents of the disabled, in every way we can, and it may be that part of what's driving people to these technologies at the moment is that they don't feel very supported.?He added.

Asked whether the discarding of human embryos, which is involved in the technique, raised ethical questions, Sandra Dill, executive director of the support and education group ACCESS Infertility Network, said: "It does, but it's an ethical question for the couple involved.

"We argue that the people who create the embryos are the ones who value life and value children. Regardless of whether they are infertile their wishes should be respected because they are the ones who value the embryos the most."

The Australian Medical Association said the ethics of creating a series of embryos and finding one compatible with the child who was alive came down to intent.

"If the intent is to create another child that is disease-free, and in doing so that child is able to help the child that is currently living with the disease, then I think ethically you could argue that is correct," president Bill Glasson said.

Sydney's St James Ethics Centre executive director Dr Simon Longstaff said the treatment was to ensure the unborn child did not inherit hyper IgM syndrome.

"I think this isn't some kind of slippery slope towards designer babies, it's the responsible application of technology for the purpose of alleviating and preventing suffering," he said.