A controversial report, which favours allowing parents to choose the sex of their child and rethinking the cloning ban, is published today by a committee of MPs split down the middle over the needs of science and the ethics of embryo research.Ethics groups will today be lining up to condemn the report signed off by five members of the 10-strong Commons select committee on science and technology. One of them, Human Genetics Alert, says the report dismisses the public's concerns about reproductive technology. "The kind of ethics we see in this report, which is incapable of saying a clear no to anything, is no ethics at all," says David King, director of HGA. "Even when dealing with human genetic engineering, cloning or the creation of human-animal hybrids, the committee wants to remove existing protections. The extreme bias in this report discredits the committee and the political cause it is espousing."One of the dissenting MPs, Geraldine Smith, the Labour MP for Morecambe and Lunesdale, called it "the Frankenstein report", adding: "It seems like anything goes as long as it's science."But another Labour MP, Ian Gibson, chairman of the committee, denied that the report goes too far. He said: "There's a rightwing drift in the world and in the country."A report like this makes people think in a much more open way about how babies are selected and the technologies and the science. The report tries to address the issues head-on. While we haven't got any solutions, we are giving the country a chance to make up its mind. We have got to keep the door open, rather than shutting it on spurious grounds."The report recommends that:· Parents who want to "balance" their family should be allowed to choose the sex of their baby;· The laboratory production of chimeras by mixing human and animal cells should be legal as long as they are destroyed within 14 days and subject to a ban on implantation on women;· A total ban on reproductive cloning cannot be justified without more argument on the "fundamental issues", even though the technique is neither safe, effective nor reliable at the moment;· The requirement on fertility clinics to consider the welfare of the potential child before treatment is unworkable and should be scrapped;· Sperm and egg donors should be allowed to remain anonymous if they want to, which will not be the case under a change of law from next month.The report is critical of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which regulates fertility treatment and embryo research. It argues that its members lack scientific and clinical expertise and that there are conflicts between its role as an enforcer of the law and its advisory role, which requires it to identify any flaws in the legislation.Reproductive decisions, and issues over whether embryos should be screened for potential genetic diseases, should be left to the doctor and patients, the committee's report says.Legislative protection is needed for the human embryo, however, so the report proposes a new bioethics committee to be drawn from both houses of parliament to consider legislation where necessary in the light of rapidly evolving technologies.In a statement, Suzi Leather, HFEA chairwoman, said the "radical" report "makes a number of bold and challenging recommendations, particularly around the freedom that doctors and scientists should have in the future to push back the boundaries of current practice".The UK had become a world leader in fertility treatment and research partly because the public had confidence in the checks and controls on the sector, she said. "The big question ... in the future is how we will maintain patient safety, public confidence and minimise risks from developing technologies."The acid test for this report will be how well it deals with the public's concerns."The five dissenting members of the committee, Paul Farrelly, Kate Hoey, Tony McWalter, Geraldine Smith and Bob Spink, issued their own statement. "We believe this report is unbalanced, light on ethics, goes too far in the direction of deregulation and is too dismissive of public opinion and much of the evidence," they said. "This report was always going to be controversial but to adopt an extreme libertarian approach from the start, on the basis that there was never going to be unanimity, was wrong. A thorough redrafting was needed, to put ethics and regulation back at the heart of all the conclusions, but this never happened."As a result, we have a report which stresses a gradualist approach up front and the importance of regulation."But then it goes on to recommend creation of hybrid animal-human embryos, unregulated creation of embryos for research and unregulated screening out of disorders in embryos for reproduction. Half the committee simply could not sign up to this."