A granddaughter giving birth to her aunt or uncle. A woman giving birth to her brother. Sound like science fiction? It’s not. This may become possible if the powers given to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority ("HFEA") are used. The HFEA has been given extraordinary and frightening powers in relation to the embryo and are currently consulting on a proposal to freeze an embryo or sperm for 55 years (extended from 10 years).
The background to this is not so far fetched. It is intended to meet the concern that someone may become infertile and may know of that risk (eg someone with cancer). So they can freeze eggs or sperm against that event. However, there are no rules preventing close relatives who would normally be forbidden to marry each other from donating sperm or embryos. This means that grandparents could donate embryos to their granddaughter for her IVF treatment if she becomes infertile. In this situation, the granddaughter would give birth to her mother's brother or sister-her aunt or uncle. The child could claim to be ‘older than my parents’.
This is a minefield. It needs careful thought and controls. The fear is that something that may be put in place to help infertility will result in unscrupulous practices and commercial exploitation for profit. Theoretically there would be nothing to stop a 35 year-old soon-to-be-infertile man from having his sperm stored until he was 90, or alternatively, from storing his parents' embryos and using them to have a child years later, after his (and the child's) biological parents had died. That child would be both his own brother and his own son.
A case of ethics being overtaken by science. Because we can doesn’t mean we should.
(More on this from lawyer Andrea Williams on CCFON: http://www.ccfon.org/)
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