THE happiness of Britain's designer baby family is not in doubt - but the ethical issues are not so clear-cut. A new era in fertility treatment is dawning which will prompt a debate over the morality surrounding ''made-to-order'' babies.

The issue is whether this is a brilliant medical technique to save a child's life, or the start of a slippery slope leading to human cloning and parents selecting their baby's sex, hair colour or intelligence.

And it is not a purely academic exercise. Dr Tom Shakespeare, an ethics expert attached to Newcastle University, says that the same technology which led to the current 'designer baby' controversy will soon be available in the North-East.

So-called designer babies are conceived to help cure an older sibling with a life-threatening disease. In this case Jamie Whitaker was born to help his brother, Charlie, who has a rare type of anaemia.

Parents Jayson and Michelle Whitaker, who have family connections with County Durham but now live in Derbyshire, beat a UK ban by going to America for treatment but similar cases are expected to crop up in the future.

So what did the Whitakers do which has sparked a fierce debate?

It works like this: In the absence of a suitable donor the parents can choose a selected embryo using a technique called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), and IVF, to have another child that is both disease-free and a good tissue match. The embryo is then implanted into the mother's womb.

After the baby is born, doctors will transfer stem cells from the baby into the sick sibling with the aim of curing the disease by kickstarting the child's dormant immune system.

On the face of it, it is pushing back the boundaries of medicine to save another life.

Few in this country have qualms about using PGD to weed out embryos with genetic disorders, although some religious groups have reservations.

The real problem arises when doctors want to go a step further and intervene to create an infant with just the right set of genes to help treat a brother or sister of the baby - effectively, creating a ''designer baby''.

Critics say this process is unethical, and the next stop on the road will be to choose skin colour, sex, eye colour, intelligence or some other characteristic.

Pro-Life groups say the process treats the new baby as a commodity, as the child is wanted simply to be a donor for its brother or sister.

The process also involves testing a number of embryos to see if they are suitable - but those that are not are disposed of. To pro-life groups this is the same as killing a child, as they believe human life begins the moment the sperm fertilises the egg. It will only be allowed to live if it is a good match; if it is a bad match it will be denied its right to life.

But Britain's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority last October refused to licence such ''tissue-typing'' IVF treatment to generate an embryo as a match for Charlie. It said such a ''tissue typing'' procedure would be unlawful and unethical as it would break the law on human fertilisation and embryology.

Instead the Whitakers went for treatment to the US which has more relaxed policies.

Another British couple, Raj and Shahana Hashmi, wanted to have a baby who could help their four-year-old son Zain, who has the rare blood disorder thalassaemia. They were allowed to use the tissue typing technique to select an embryo because the condition is genetic, and there is a strong chance any baby conceived naturally would have the condition.

But there is no genetic test for Diamond Blackfan Anaemia, which Charlie Whitaker suffers from, and there was only around a one in 50 chance of the Whitakers having another baby with the condition.

So under the Human Fertility and Embryology Act 1990, the Human Fertility and Embryology Authority cannot authorise tissue typing for the Whitakers because it would not be done to avoid the new baby having the disease.

Some reports suggest there are at least ten couples in the UK who want to have a ''designer baby'' for medical reasons similar to the Whitaker family.

Dr Shakespeare, director of outreach at the PEALS (Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Institute) unit at Newcastle's Centre For Life, is very familiar with the dilemmas presented by advancing medical technology.

Even before this story broke, Dr Shakespeare has been involved in organising public meetings on Tyneside so that issues like cloning and designer babies have already been thoroughly aired.

The academic has a vested interest in the whole issue of human interference in reproduction. Genetic screening could have been disastrous for Dr Shakespeare, as the 4ft 5in tall academic inherited achondroplastic dwarfism from his father. While Dr Shakespeare agrees that the whole area needs to be properly regulated, his gut feeling is that the Whitakers should have been allowed to have the treatment they needed at home.

'THIS was a very complicated case, ethically and morally. People will have mixed feelings but my own hunch is that they should have let them do it. It is not easy to understand that the authority allowed the Hashmis to do it but not this other family, because, although it is technically different, it is very similar," says Dr Shakespeare.

"Having said that, I would be at the forefront of those people who say you have to draw the line somewhere. There is a lot of moral opposition to this whole area. People need to be reassured that there is tight and strong regulation.," he adds.

"Many people in Europe think that embryo selection is wrong. Most people here in Britain don't share that view. The question is how far should it go. I personally think this couple shouldn't have had to go to America but I understand why the HFEA felt that they had to draw a line. I am sure it will be tested again and again in the future."

Despite his sympathy for the family, Dr Shakespeare feels that the case of the Whitakers does not mean that the regulations need to be changed.

"Some people have said we need a new law, I am not sure that we do. I am far from certain whether this case establishes any major principles which are not already adequately covered."

FOR Dr Shakespeare the welfare of the children involved is hugely important. "We all feel for this family but what about the child that has been created? If this is a success he will be bathed in glory but if it doesn't he will always be the child that failed, and that is a heavy thing to start your life with."

Bishop Ambrose Griffiths, Roman Catholic prelate for Hexham and Newcastle, says everyone will share in the joy of the family's new child but he is clearly troubled at the implications of the treatment.

"Human life begins at the fertilisation of the embryo. If I understand it correctly, in order to get the embryo that they wanted it would be inevitable that other embyos would be created and subsequently destroyed

"I certainly wouldn't wish to judge the family's motives, but why our church objects to this is that we hold very strongly to the dignity of every single human being," the bishop says.

"Human beings are so precious, everybody is unique, you can't risk a lesser view than that. If we do anything to reduce the dignity of individuals, to reduce the link between a child and the love of its parents and in any way to encourage people to think of children as possessions we are going down a terribly dangerous path," he adds.

What is certain is that this thorny issue will come up again in the near future.