London: Monday, Sep 5, 2011 

An NRI couple who used artificial fertilisation to create a "saviour sibling" in the hope of saving their terminally ill child, now plans to give a chance of life to the other 15 or so embryos they produced in the process.

According to a report in The Sunday Times, the couple Jay and Ami Bharvada, from east London, are fertile but went through four cycles of In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) to screen the embryos and find the one that was not only free from the fatal condition that afflicts their son, Jivan, but also a tissue match so the resulting baby could give him a life-saving bone marrow transplant, the only hope of cure for the four-year-old child. The couple eventually found a suitable embryo and their daughter, Jaya, was born in May. However, the couple does not want to discard the other embryos.

Ami (36), who was a business analyst before she had children, said: "We are creating life. It is not something that we take lightly and although we are creating it to save another life, we didn't believe in discarding them (the embryos) or putting them into research. We are going to have a big family."