The research is aimed at understanding and overcoming male fertility, but the project has much wider implications. Will two women be able to have their own biological daughter one day?

One of the male tweeters I follow is already scared, heralding the news as sign his species is finished. But there’s no reason to assumepanic stations yet — the team has succeeded only in producing sperm from male embryonic stem cells and producing a baby with the new sperm is illegal in some countries, including Britain.

More practical applications of the artificial sperm are to analyse it for the effect of toxins, such as cancer treatments, which can often cause infertility.

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The Australian study indicates would-be parents should track a woman’s ovulation, but instead of waiting UNTIL she ovulates to start practicing, they should get cracking a week in advance. Seven straight days of ejaculation improved sperm quality for four-fifths of the men in the study.

Although one fifth of the men actually saw their sperm quality drop off, the bigger number saw a hike both in the “quality” of their swimmers and how well they swam (key to actually making it TO the egg for fertilisation):

The moral of the story? Practice does indeed make perfect.

Image: eHow

Marrero’s fight to harvest her lover’s sperm was a race against the clock, as sperm remain fresh for only 36 hours after death and Marrero was required to have a court order okaying the procedure, since she and Quintana were not married. The judge approved of the post mortem sperm extraction with only four hours to spare, so sperm bank employees rushed to the medical centrewhere Quintana’s body was held.

In the midst of the indescribable pain that Marrero must be in, it makes sense that she would jump at the opportunity to keep the man she loved in her life, in any way possible. But, as unimaginable as it surely seems to her now, Marrero
could eventually fall in love with someone who would love to be the father to her second child, making life much easier for this unborn child. I’m certainly not against artificial insemination for single women, but bringing a baby into
the world so that the memory of his father can live on is, in my opinion, too much burden to place on a child.

Marrero claims that having another child was Quintana’s wish and is the “last thing I can do for him.” But having a child while alive and becoming a father after death are two entirely separate things. There’s no way to know what Quintana, who was not expecting to die so young, would have wanted in this situation.

Do you think that the judge was right to approve of Marrero’s desire to increase her family, despite her lover’s death?

Photo: Daily News

Krystle Jane Ross from Queensland has just been granted permission by the courts to preserve her husband’s sperm after the 25 year old, Thomas Takurau, died in a workplace accident.

While Justice John Byrne granted Ms Ross permission to preserve the sperm, a date has yet to be set for hearing Ms Ross’ application to actually use it.

This is not the first such case in Australia or the rest of the world, however the laws have always been a bit vague.

New legislation introduced in Victoria last week under the Assisted Reproductive Treatment (ART) bill makes things a little clearer, by allowing women to conceive using the sperm of their dead partners, with prior consent.

Both Ms Ross’ and Mr Takurau’s profiles state they someday wanted children, but is that considered prior written consent?

I honestly can’t imagine how I’d feel if I lost my husband while trying to conceive a sibling for our son. But I also don’t know how I’d explain the harvest to family and friends. It’s a brave new world, folks.

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