British couple breaks the law to use death son’s sperm and a surrogate to create a ‘designer grandson’
Three days after their only son’s death, two parents identified only as “wealthy British couple” harvested his sperm to create a “designer grandson.”
According to Metro, the couple collected their son’s sperm in violation of the United Kingdom laws, which prohibit posthumous extraction without consent. (see U.K.’s Human Fertilization and Embryology Act 1990).
Human embryo, 8 cells on day 3 photo: ekem, Courtesy: RWJMS IVF Program via wikimedia commons
The couple sent the frozen sperm to the US and “created a grandson” using donor eggs and a surrogate. The son was unmarried and had no children.
“The boy, now three, is understood to be living in the UK with his grandparents in what is believed to be the first case of its kind in the UK,” reports Metro.
Dr. David Smotrich, the fertility doctor, who performed the procedure, worked with the grandparents remotely from his IVF clinic in La Jolla, California, adding that it was a “privilege” to help them.
“The English couple lost their son under the most tragic of circumstances,” Dr. Smotrich told the Mail on Sunday. “They desperately wanted an heir and a grandchild. It was a privilege to be able to help them.
“Producing a child using posthumous sperm is exceedingly rare. I have done it only five times,” he told the newspaper. “This couple were desperate to find someone who would be able to create an heir. They wanted a boy. What we did is not available in the UK, where gender-selection isn’t legal.”
Professor Allan Pacey, a former chairman of the British Fertility Society, said: “If the patient, in this case, wasn’t being treated by a clinic, and had not signed the necessary consent forms for the posthumous retrieval, storage and use of his sperm, then a criminal act has probably taken place.”
“The clinician who extracted the sperm is in breach of the law as is the facility which stored and exported the sample,” Pacey concluded.
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