British laws governing "designer babies" could soon be relaxed to allow more screening and embryo selection, the watchdog on fertility said on Saturday.

A spokesperson for the British Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) said, the policy on creating babies who could help sick siblings would be under discussion, as part of a general meeting of the agency, on Wednesday.

It is reported that HFEA is under pressure from doctors and parents to make the move. Many parents want to use in-vitro fertilization embryos and genetic screening to create babies whose umbilical cord blood could save the life of a sibling.

Mohamed Taranissi, the director of London's Assisted Reproduction Gynecology Center, has been invited by HFEA to submit a test case application to the watch dog next week.

He is pursuing a rule change in a bid to help a two-year-old boy who has a potentially fatal blood disorder called Diamond Blackfan Anaemia, which can be treated by using stem cells to stimulate his body to produce healthy red blood cells.

Neither the boy's parents nor his five-year-old brother are close enough matches to give him the stem cells he needs.

The HFEA spokesperson said: "It's such a fast moving area and they (members of the agency) will look at how much the science has advanced as well as looking at whether the ethical and legal sides have moved on."

"None of the policies are set in stone and they all have to be constantly reviewed...they could relax the rules governing embryo selection or they could quite easily tighten them up," she added.

Pro-life charity Life has labeled the HFEA "feeble" and said the plans are "another move down the slippery slope".

But the British Medical Association (BMA) has given its approval to the proposed changes. Michael Wilks, who chairs the BMA's medical ethics committee, told BBC News that there would be no free-for-all. "I think the absolute key to this is the fact that this technology is regulated by the most efficient regulatory body in the world."