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WHAT may well be the world’s first attempt to create a “designer baby” using taxpayers’ money has been defended by the fertility expert who will carry out the £5000 procedure in the UK.

The aim is to select an IVF embryo that will develop into a baby whose umbilical cord blood can save a sibling with the blood disorder beta thalassaemia major. This has been carried out in several countries, but opponents who believe it is unethical are outraged that it could be done free of charge on the UK’s National Health Service. “We think it’s extraordinary misuse of NHS funds,” says Josephine Quintavalle of the London-based lobby group Comment on Reproductive Ethics.

But Simon Fishel, who will carry out the procedure at the Centres for Assisted Reproduction in Nottingham, sees it differently. “It costs around £50,000 a year to give a thalassaemic child the cocktail of drugs and transfusions they need to stay alive, so over a lifetime it can amount to between £1 million and £2 million. Even if it takes four cycles of IVF treatment to succeed, the £20,000 spent is much less,” he says. “And you are curing a foreshortened life of pain and suffering.”