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Asked by cewwen to Louise, Michaela, Sian, Steve, Yvette on 17 Jun 2010 in Categories: General.
Question: When Homosexuals get IVF treatment how do their genes mix? + How are the sperm cells placed into the egg?
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Sian Harding answered on 16 Jun 2010:
Two women find a sperm donor and two men find an egg donor. Only one of each pair will be able to contribute the other egg/sperm. Sometimes one woman will give the egg and the other give birth to the baby. However, scientists have been able to make sperm from stem cells, giviing the future possibilty of two women being biological parents of one baby
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Louise Johnson answered on 16 Jun 2010:
There’s no way yet to use two sperm or two eggs in IVF, so the treatment is the same as for a heterosexual couple who are having infertility treatment, although a same sex couple will have to use either donor sperm, or a donor egg and a surrogate mother.
The egg donor is given hormone injections to make lots of her egg cells develop, and then some egg cells (usually about twenty of them) are taken from her ovaries with a needle under anaesthetic, incubated with sperm until they are fertilised, grown for three to five days, and then one or more are transferred into the uterus through the cervix where they, hopefully, will implant and develop normally.
Usually several embryos are put in at each round, in case one of them doesn’t stick, which is why IVF births are more likely than average to be twins.The unused embryos can be frozen for future use, used in stem cell research, or destroyed according to the couple’s wishes.
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Steven Kiddle answered on 16 Jun 2010:
I don’t know, but i assume they get an egg and extract the DNA (the genes are part of DNA), they would then take a sperm and extract its DNA. Once this DNA was placed inside the egg then another sperm could fertilise it, the genes would mix as per normal. The one flaw with this is that they may have to do something special with the sex chromosomes X and Y, because otherwise an embroyo could end up with YY, an unatural chromosome combination.
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Michaela Livingstone answered on 16 Jun 2010:
I’m not sure that homosexual men currently have access to IVF treatment in the UK. As far as I’m aware, gay men have only just got the right to pursue a surrogate mother and then they have to choose who donates the sperm or mix it and artificially inseminate it – ie placing the sperm in the womans vagina without sex. In terms of IVF and mixing genes – an egg has half the number of genes you finally end up with, as does a sperm, and those genes are in the nucleus of them – sometimes, if there’s something wrong with the sperm, the sperm head can be injected directly in to the egg. In terms of lesbian couples, I’m not sure if this happens, but I guess if you just need two ‘half’ nuclei, like those of the egg and sperm, you could replace the sperm head with the nucleus of another egg, inject that, and then stimulate them somehow to fuse and then divide.
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Yvette Wilson answered on 17 Jun 2010:
sperm cells and eggs are placed together in fluid with the correct conditions, then the sperm is able to penetrate the egg so that it has genes from both the female and male. the egg then needs to be placed in a woman so that it can develop. This means that the homosexuals have to find someone of the other sex who will give them either sperm or egg and a surrogate mother if they are homosexuals
Comments
cewwen commented on :
Louise do you have any experience under this subject?
Louise commented on :
No, but I have some friends who were having trouble conceiving, and they went through IVF
lala commented on :
Sian, I find your comment very interesting. Two women being biological parents to a child- I’d love to see that !
Michaela commented on :
Lala, I spoke to an expert in the field of male fertility about this because he actually wrote an article in the Guardian talking about how these so called sperm from stem cells were really nothing of the sort and the scientists doing the research have over-stated their research. Having said that, it’s a start on a long path, so not all bad.