Dozens of gay British men have paid about £33,000 (NZ$90,955) to create a baby of their chosen sex on an IVF programme for two-father families. Nearly 20 male couples from the UK have already taken part in the scheme, in which they pay for eggs from a university student which are then implanted in a different woman who bears the child. The Fertility Institutes, the clinic in Los Angeles which runs the programme, said it had also received 25 inquiries by last week from male couples in Britain thinking of paying for surrogate children. The programme is thought to be the first specialist surrogacy scheme dedicated to “two-father” families. The men can even choose whether to have boys or girls, with three-quarters so far opting for male babies. The clinic said it was meeting the demand from gay men who were desperate to become parents but were unable to start a family in Britain because of the shortage of donor eggs and surrogate mothers. Critics say the dedicated gay programme is the epitome of the manufactured “bio-family”. Josephine Quintavalle, founder of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, an antiIVF campaign group, said: “This programme shows we have reached the ultimate in the manufacture of the bio-baby. There always seems to be a new way of reconstructing the traditional family. On the one hand in the United Kingdom we are saying that a child doesn't need a father, but in America we are saying that two fathers is a good idea. “It's time to ask children what they'd like rather than what selfish adults think is a good idea. I would put my money on children preferring a stable family with a mother and father.” The couples pay for separate egg donors and surrogate mothers to maximise the chance of creating a healthy, intelligent child. The egg donors are students who are unlikely to wish to carry their own child, while surrogates tend to be from working-class backgrounds. Dr Jeffrey Steinberg, director of The Fertility Institutes, said: “On our programme, to be an egg donor, it is a requirement that you are between 18 to 27 years old and that you are currently at a university. Couples worry about the family history, and if there is a social marker of stability and achievement it is probably success at a university. University students are not interested in carrying the baby for themselves or anyone else.” “The surrogates, on the other hand, are very interested in carrying the baby but, a lot of the time, they are blue-collar and not of the best of the selection [for eggs]. If we separate them we get the best egg donors and the best women to carry the babies, which is the perfect combination.” Steinberg added: “In the past two years we have probably treated 20 British gay couples and in the past four days, since launching the dedicated programme for gay couples, we have had about 25 e-mails from gay British couples. There is a pent-up demand for this.” Of the £33,000 that the gay couple pay to the clinic, about £13,000-£18,000 goes to paying for the surrogate mother. It is illegal to pay a surrogate mother in Britain, although expenses are permitted. It is also illegal to pay egg donors in Britain and only modest expenses are allowed. For lesbian couples, by contrast, the government is making it easier to start a family. Last year Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, introduced legislation proposing that single women and lesbian couples should get IVF treatment without having to fulfil a legal requirement that the child had a father figure. Ref: Times Online (m)