Couple pay £9,000 to have the first British Web baby

 Add your view

Jennalee Ryan works at the Abraham Centre of Life, which claims to be the world’s first human embryo bank

A British woman will be impregnated with a "designer baby" in the next few months, it has been revealed.

She will be the first British woman to undergo treatment at a U.S. embryo bank that allows would-be parents to select their child's characteristics over the Internet.

What do you think of the controversial treatment? Tell us in reader comments below

Customers can choose egg and sperm donors after seeing pictures of them and receiving details of their medical history, education and family background.

The woman and her husband, both in their 40s, paid around £9,000 for the service.

An embyro fitting the woman's requirements will be created over the next fortnight and she will fly out later in the year to have it implanted.

Yesterday, ethical and religious groups condemned the human embryo bank, saying it was providing what amounted to "supermarket babies".

The embryo bank is run by the Abraham Centre of Life, based in San Antonio, Texas.

Its director, Jennalee Ryan, a mother of six, said the British couple wanted to remain anonymous. She would only say that they had asked that the child be white.

"The embryos will be created in the next two weeks and then they will be frozen, so the British couple can come out whenever they want," she said. "They can then return home to have the baby.

"I probably have on my waiting list about ten British women so far. Whenever there is this option British people are going to come here and I will assist them."

Late last year, the centre carried out its first two procedures, on a woman from Canada and a single mother from California. Both are now five months' pregnant.

This will be the first time that a British woman is implanted with an embryo from such an "off the shelf'" company.

There have been cases of women being implanted with embryos that have been selected so they would develop into children with the matching tissue required to give an older sibling a life-saving transplant.

But all previous cases have been for medical reasons and have not included the choice of donors. If a couple are interested in buying an embryo, the Abraham Centre of Life will e-mail them details of the donors they believe match their requirements. They will also see pictures of the donors, as they were as babies and as they are as adults.

The centre allows couples to buy embryos which have no biological link to either of them.

It boasts that all sperm donors are college graduates, many of them to doctorate level, while egg donors are in their 20s and are mostly graduates.

The full service costs between $14,000 and $18,000 (between £7,100 and £9,100), according to the company's website.

While the selection of embryos is outlawed in the UK, there are no such restrictions in the U.S.

Campaigners were alarmed by the development. Josephine Quintavalle, of the campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: "This is commodifying human life. It is very close to having supermarket babies.

"It is not an acceptable solution to infertility to simply pick babies from catalogues."

Stephen Green, national director of Christian Voice, said: "The objection to the idea of designer babies is that it divorces procreation from the act of sexual congress, and there's a real sense in which it is playing God.

"It is another aspect of society which has completely lost its way. I have sympathy with infertile couples but nobody said that having a child is a right."

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which regulates IVF treatment in the UK, said nothing could be done to stop patients going abroad for the treatment.

The Health Department is reviewing the laws on fertility and embryology but said yesterday that designer babies would remain outlawed.

 

What's on today   What's on tomorrow

Receive our newsletter