Three days after their only son's death, two parents identified only as "wealthy British couple" harvested his sperm 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 defiance of United Kingdom laws, which prohibit semen extraction without consent, and shipped it off to the United States to create this “designer grandson” using donor eggs and a surrogate.
“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.
The U.K.’s Human Fertilization and Embryology Act 1990 dictates that no person can extract another’s sperm without written consent, even posthumously. Dr. David Smotrich, a fertility expert 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.”
The son was unmarried and had no children. The 55-year-old Smotrich had previously broken ethical barriers when he “created the first test-tube baby for a same-sex US couple in 1997, and previously helped Berkshire-based businessman Ian Mucklejohn become Britain’s first single dad of triplets in 2001,” according to Metro.
“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.”
Legal experts told the Mail the grandparents could face criminal charges for violating U.K. laws. 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.
Concept: Shuri and Peter being internet friends for years because they both dweeb out together about some kind of research…
but Peter kinda thought she was kidding about being a princess of a country that was secretly super badass on top of being a science nerd (she doesn’t discourage this because its not something she’s actually supposed to tell outsiders)
…and she thinks he’s kidding about being Spiderman (he doesn’t discourage this either)
then they meet IRL at some point and both of them have this moment of “wait WHAT”
(bonus points if Tony and t'challa hear about this and just start wheezing in the background)
Note: hard times include things like busy schedules, deaths in the family, miscommunications, growing pains, a partner losing a job, struggles with just growing as people and a couple, etc. Getting through hard times isn’t “this person keeps mistreating me but it’s just hard times so I’ll stay.”
baratheonpilled
theartofmadeline
ellievsbear
turnnoffyourmind
kaledo-art
janainaart
snowghoul
