Joanna Jepson, the curate of St Michael's church, Chester, was born with a facial deformity and campaigned against a woman who was carrying a baby with a cleft palate having a late abortion:

"I think it is unnecessary for the HFEA to relax the rules. They can save the cord blood and there are other ways to go about matching tissue for a sick child other than creating a baby purely to be a match for the first child. It seems very unethical and missing the point about what it is to be a human being.

"The events of the last year and the development of public attitude has been that it is going too far over this. There are some big ethical questions over designer babies and we have got to listen to that. How is it going to help that child's emotional integration later on in life when that child knows it has not been valued in its own right and for its own sake?

"I do not think we can just allow it for some families and I think we have got to look at other ways of finding a cure for sick children - with developments such as cord blood.

"It opens up other things like picking an embryo be cause it has been genetically screened and genetically pure. It also opens up aborting defective embryos.

"Families see themselves as consumers and it is their right to create a child because it is going to be a match for another child. We can't afford to allow ourselves to view human life in such a light."

Dr Vivienne Nathanson, the British Medical Association's head of science and ethics:

"We do not see any moral difference between the Hashmi and Whitaker cases.

"That does not mean that we would want to see broader relaxation and it is important that the rules are policed so people can be confident that we don't have unbridled freedom.

"We understand that families have children for many different complex reasons. Parents in this situation are not just looking for a potential donor. We want to reassure people that we have thought hard about this.

"Inevitably, some people will think the rules are too strict or too lax but we always believe it is possible to move the bottom line position and to still maintain limits.

Dr David King, director of Human Genetics Alert:

"Basically, I am against the idea of selecting children in order to be tissue donors. I just think it is basically wrong to create a child as a means to an end rather than the end itself.

"It is wrong to create a child simply as a means to an end, however good that end might be, because to do so turns that child into an object. Children are not commodities for our own use.

"This violates the basic ethical principle that we should not use people as tools. Unfortunately, this is just the latest example of how reprogenetic technology is turning children into commodities.

"We must not allow our desire to ease suffering to overwhelm one ethical principle after another. Public policy must not be based on individual families' desperation, but on a sober assessment of the long term consequences for us all.

"This kind of policy-making is the job of parliament, not of the HFEA.

"One of our main objections is the impact on the child that is created. I think people will quite rightly speculate about the psychological impact."

Dr Ainsley Newson, a post-doctoral associate in clinical ethics and genetics at the Medical Ethics Unit of Imperial College London:

"It is very important to distinguish between using a child as a means and as a mere means valued for one purpose only. Whilst it is ethically unacceptable to create a child merely to save another, children born from this procedure are no less likely to be loved and supported by their parents than any other children are.

"We have to take into account that parents have often made this decision, without using reproductive technology, in the hope that a child conceived and born naturally can be a donor. What has happened now is that the technology has left people's homes and entered the public sphere.

"People have children for a variety of reasons - sometimes by accident and sometimes to save a marriage. It is very important to emphasise that we have got a very small select group of parents who have made a conscious decision to have a child in this way. Given the gravity of this decision they are hardly going to treat the child badly as a result.

"If anything, as they have gone to so much trouble, that child is going to be very much cherished.

"It is very important that this decision is revisited over time. It doesn't mean that it will lead us to 'designer babies'. Regulations need to be regularly scrutinised and access to this technology should be tightly controlled on a case by case basis.

"We must also not forget the importance of research into the causes of these debilitating diseases."

Angela Lyons, child psychologist:

"It would be fascinating to find out what effect [creating a baby to save his or her elder sibling] would have on the children because it is such a new concept and it is easy to be negative about it.

"We know as child psychologists that there is sibling rivalry in families, which are their own little microcosm of society.

"It is going to be a question of how the parents handle this rivalry. It is always assumed that the parents are going to tell the truth - we have learned through adoption studies how devastating it can be for the child."