A childless man in the Netherlands has turned to his father for his sperm after having failed to conceive with his wife despite three years of their marriage.
The couple has found a clinic which will honour their unusual request, the Daily Mail reported.
According to researchers in the journal Human Reproduction, while such arrangements have potential advantages over using donations from strangers, they do bring their own set of complications, such as confusion over the child's actual parent.
In this case, the child produced from this union of egg and sperm will have a ‘father’ who is his biological half-brother and a ‘grandfather’ who is his biological father.
There are varying views on the issue. But most experts agree so-called intra-familial assisted reproduction should not necessarily be banned.
"I don't know that laws should encompass forbidding intra-familial donation," said Adrienne Asch, director of the Centre for Ethics at Yeshiva University in New York City.
But couples who request it “should be very carefully counselled about the psychological pitfalls that could await them", said Asch.