How to make babies without a man
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
(Filed: 10/07/2001)
LESBIAN couples could one day have baby girls that are genetically their own, thanks to a technique being developed in Australia to help infertile men.
Doctors believe they have found a way to fertilise an egg with cells from any part of the body, rather than sperm. An Australian team has created embryos in this way with mice.
The research, which complements efforts to enable infertile women to "reprogramme" donated eggs with their own genetic recipe, was originally intended to help couples to have babies that are their own genetic offspring, even when the man has no sperm or even sperm-making cells.
One of the researchers, Dr Orly Lacham-Kaplan, of Monash University, Melbourne, said yesterday that the sperm-free technique could, in theory at least, enable a lesbian couple to have a baby, with one woman contributing an egg and the second a cell to fertilise it.
Full Story
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"I suspect that many an ailurophobe hates cats only because he feels they are better people than he is; more honest, more secure, more loved, more whatever he is not."
--Winifred Carriere
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
(Filed: 10/07/2001)
LESBIAN couples could one day have baby girls that are genetically their own, thanks to a technique being developed in Australia to help infertile men.
Doctors believe they have found a way to fertilise an egg with cells from any part of the body, rather than sperm. An Australian team has created embryos in this way with mice.
The research, which complements efforts to enable infertile women to "reprogramme" donated eggs with their own genetic recipe, was originally intended to help couples to have babies that are their own genetic offspring, even when the man has no sperm or even sperm-making cells.
One of the researchers, Dr Orly Lacham-Kaplan, of Monash University, Melbourne, said yesterday that the sperm-free technique could, in theory at least, enable a lesbian couple to have a baby, with one woman contributing an egg and the second a cell to fertilise it.
Full Story
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"I suspect that many an ailurophobe hates cats only because he feels they are better people than he is; more honest, more secure, more loved, more whatever he is not."
--Winifred Carriere
