IN MOST countries, gay and lesbian couples can鈥檛 even get married. Yet
according to newspaper headlines this week, same-sex couples could soon have
children of their own, using the egg of one woman and a nonreproductive cell
from the body of another woman, for example. These children will carry a mixture
of the couple鈥檚 genes, just like babies made the old-fashioned way.
The key element of the research causing the fuss, however, is persuading a
normal cell to shed one of its two sets of chromosomes, allowing it to replace
an egg or sperm cell
(see New 女生小视频, 7 July, p 5).
This could one day help
some infertile couples. But most lesbians and gay men can produce eggs and
sperm. Two sperm, or two eggs, could simply be combined to create an embryo.
The trouble with all these techniques is that so far, when they鈥檝e been tried
in animals, the embryos haven鈥檛 survived to birth, because it鈥檚 not yet possible
to manipulate the chemical marks, or imprints, on the transferred genes. These
imprints are specific to certain types of cells.
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So broody gay and lesbian couples shouldn鈥檛 start rejoicing yet. The results
are encouraging, but there鈥檚 a long way to go before these techniques can safely
be used to create babies. But sometime, somewhere, same-sex couples will be able
to have babies in this way. One wonders whether, when that day comes, such
couples will yet have the same legal rights as heterosexual couples.
