THE British woman who wants to have a baby with her dead husband's sperm yesterday said she needed £50,000 sterling to continue her legal battle.
Mrs Diane Blood (30) held a press conference following what she said was "a sleepless night" after she heard the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority decided to uphold its decision not to allow her to be inseminated with the sperm abroad.
In a statement, the authority stressed, once again, that no written consent had been given by Mr Stephen Blood for the sperm to be taken from his body. He died of meningitis 18 months ago.
Later, it emerged the HFEA's decision had been taken after the British Medical Association's ethics committee had advised it to turn down Mrs Blood's application.
"We, like many other organisations and individuals, have been very moved by Mrs Blood's tragic case circumstances and have great sympathy for her predicament," the BMA committee chairman said in a letter to the HFEA. "But we believe that the doctrine of informed consent, which is central to medical ethics, must not be eroded."
Mrs Blood said she felt she had been branded a liar after health officials told her their reasons for preventing her from having her dead husband's baby.
In a letter faxed to her parents in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, the HFEA said Mr Blood had not, given specific consent for his sperm to be exported.
The organisation was "reluctant" to rely on someone else's evidence that he ever gave any consent.
Mrs Blood said: "My husband even went to see our financial adviser a week before he died in view of the fact that I believed I was pregnant, to check our finances would be all right in the event of his death.
"This points to the fact he had thought very carefully the implications of this situation."
Lord Robert Winston, the in vitro fertilisation pioneer, condemned the BMA's intervention, insisting Mrs Blood's case should have been treated on its merits rather than according to general principles.
He told the BBC's lunchtime news: "Ethics are never fixed. I am afraid, sadly, the BMA ethics committee has let Mrs Blood, down."