Researchers Say Same-Sex Couples May Soon Be Able to Produce Biological Children Together

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Well this is a game-changer if I ever heard one: Scientists say that same-sex couples may soon be able to produce biological children together.

Researchers at Cambridge University and Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science say they have discovered a way to “create human egg and sperm cells from the stem cells in the skin of two adults.” Which means, for instance, an egg can be created from the stem cells of two men, and sperm cells can be created from the stem cells of two women. Queerty has more:

Using stem cell lines from embryos and cells from the skin of five adults, researchers engineered sperm cells, then compared the cells with those from aborted fetuses to see if the two had matching characteristics.

“We have succeeded in the first and most important step of this process,”Azim Surani, professor of physiology and reproduction at Cambridge, told the Sunday Times, “which is to show we can make these very early human stem cells in a dish.”

“It has already caused interest from gay groups because of the possibility of making egg and sperm cells from parents of the same sex,” added the head of Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science, Jacob Hanna.

Researchers in the study say that we could be seeing same-sex couples producing children together in as little as two years.