‘Dr. Calum MacKellar, a bioethicist associated with the University of Edinburgh,
has been outspoken about egg nuclear transfer, expressing a concern that it could
be used to “mate” the genetic material from two sperm cells to create a biological
child from two men. Theoretically, the technique could be used to introduce sperm
DNA into an enucleated egg, fertilize this “male egg” with another sperm and
gestate the resulting embryo in a surrogate mother. (Of course, this could be done
with the DNA of two female eggs as well.) […and recent speculation suggests it’s not impossible to alter a man’s body and hormonal environment to allow gestation…]As simple as it might sound, this scenario is still somewhat remote, since the
creation and fertilization of a male egg would require researchers to overcome
certain biological obstacles, not just legislative and psychological ones. One such
impediment would be the automatic response that mammalian gametic DNA seems
to exhibit in which it recognizes the DNA of the opposite sex, otherwise known as
imprinting. Nevertheless, MacKellar is concerned that loopholes in the British
legislation allow research that could bring about the male egg. In the draft of a
recent article, he asks rhetorically: “Would society accept such motherless
children?” ‘ AlterNet
