Spain approves 'donor embryos'

Spain has given provisional approval to eight applications for a new embryonic procedure to treat children with incurable diseases, the health ministry said tonight.

Under the procedure, parents of children with incurable illnesses conceive new embryos and have a healthy child who would serve as a tissue donor for the sick one.

Such illnesses include some forms of leukaemia and genetic disorders like Fanconi anaemia, a health ministry official said.

Yesterday, the government’s Committee on Assisted Reproduction reviewed the first 24 applications for the procedure, which became available in May after Parliament passed a bill lifting tough restrictions on assisted reproduction and stem cell research.

“Up until now affected families have had to travel to foreign countries, at great personal and emotional costs, to receive this treatment and cure their children,” the country’s health ministry said in a statement.

The law, part of a Socialist government agenda that has angered the Catholic Church, limits the procedure to exceptional cases in which all other treatments have failed. Each case is reviewed individually by the committee.

Of the 24 applications presented before the panel, eight were provisionally approved pending review by a second committee, the health ministry said. Sixteen others did not present adequate information for clinical evaluation.

If approved by the second committee, the eight cases, all presented by the Valencian infertility institute, must be authorised by authorities in the eastern region of Valencia.

The conservative Popular Party, which opposed the procedure in parliament, controls Valencia’s government.