English to Greek Medical

ONDON (Reuters Health) - Britain's fertility watchdog gave the green light on Wednesday to
tissue-typing of embryos so that compatible stem cells from the resulting child could be used to treat
brothers and sisters with life-threatening genetic disorders.

Although preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) techniques are already used to test embryos for
disorders such as cystic fibrosis before in vitro fertilisation, they have not until now been used in the UK
to assist the treatment of other people.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority--which regulates this field of medical science--said in
a statement it had now decided ``in principle to allow tissue typing to be used with PGD for serious
genetic disease.

``This decision could allow a couple at risk of passing on a genetic disease to use PGD, not only to select
embryos free from the disease, but also to select an embryo so that stem cells from the resulting baby's
umbilical cord blood could be used in the treatment of an existing affected sibling.