London - A wealthy British couple have apparently illegally used their dead son’s sperm to create a "designer grandson" – who is now three years old and being raised by them.
Their unmarried son died aged 26 in a motorbike accident. But his grieving parents, both in their 50s, instructed a urologist to harvest semen from his corpse.
In what may be a breach of UK laws and without previous consent from their son, they sent the sperm to the La Jolla IVF clinic in California.
undefinedThe clinic used a donor’s eggs and a female surrogate to carry the child and the couple paid up to £100 000 (about R1.9-million).
Gender selection techniques were used to ensure the child would be a boy, meaning he would be a male heir for the family.
The doctor who performed the procedure said: "Producing a child using posthumous sperm is exceedingly rare. I have only done it five times."