Gay groups split over 'engineered babies'

Gay rights organisations were divided yesterday over a suggestion that male homosexual couples might one day be able to have a child whowas the genetic offspring of both of them.

Gay rights organisations were divided yesterday over a suggestion that male homosexual couples might one day be able to have a child whowas the genetic offspring of both of them.

The prospect of a child being born with two genetic fathers was raised by Dr Calum MacKellar, a lecturer in bioethics and biochemistry at Edinburgh University, who said gay couples could in theory create children together using the genetic technique employed to produce Dolly the sheep.

A spokesman for the gay rights group Outrage! said the development would be welcomed by all gay couples who aspire to be parents. "This news seems like an answer to the prayers of gay couples who want to have children."

However, the gay group Stonewall said the development would be unlikely to appeal to most gay men who, if they wanted children, had adoption, fostering or sperm donation open to them. "We would be surprised if gay men wanted to have children with no reference to a woman," a spokesman said.

According to Dr MacKellar, who runs the European Bioethical Research charity, cell nuclear replacement techniques used to create Dolly, the world's first cloned sheep, could be used to create so-called "male eggs", which could be fertilised by sperm from another man. Such an "egg" would be created by removing the nucleus from a donor egg and replacing it with the nucleus of a sperm cell. The new egg could be fertilised in the laboratory by another sperm before being implanted in the womb of a surrogate mother.

Dr MacKellar said: "It's theoretically possible - if they were able to control the implanting - to have a child that's born as a result of having two fathers, though they would need a surrogate mother."

He added that important genetic obstacles remained, which currently prevent the idea from becoming reality. Chief among these is that the embryo of a mammal created using only paternal DNA lacks imprinted maternal genes that allow it to develop normally. If this could be overcome, it should be theoretically possible for the embryo to grow normally.

"Some advances have been made in this respect so we might not be as far away as we thought," he added.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority said scientists who wished to attempt to produce a child with two genetic fathers would have to show the research was necessary or desirable and that it advanced knowledge in one of five areas including infertility, contraception or congenital abnormality.

A government Bill on cloning and fertility treatment and research will go before MPs next year, but is not expected to address the ethics of "male" eggs.