IVF: No law yet in Nigeria on pregnancy with dead man’s sperm

Conceiving a baby with sperm extracted from a dead man (post humously) is an IVF innovation that is gradually gaining popularity elsewhere in the world.

Through this procedure, young men, who died suddenly without fathering a baby, have a chance to conceive, from 0-48 hours after being dead. A recent case was that of a healthy baby boy born after doctors in Australia used sperm taken two days after the father had died from a fatal motor bike injury for In-vitro Fertilization (IVF) procedure. The wife of the deceased had opted for the procedure after her husband died without a chance to father a child. Doctors had described it as a ‘most extraordinary case’, due to the length of time the sperm survived after the man’s death. Previously the longest time recorded for sperm taken posthumously that produced a healthy baby was 30 hours – 18 hours less than in this case.

IVF expert Steve Robson, an associate professor at the Australian National University medical school, said there had been fears sperm taken after death could have its DNA damaged, but this case had shown this did not occur. In fact, the woman had become pregnant at the first attempt, and now has a healthy baby boy. A similar case is that of a Texan mother, Missy Evans, who gained media attention in 2009 for her attempts to use her deceased son Nikolas’s sperm to create a child. She later won permission to harvest Nikolas’s sperm, and sought and found willing surrogates in several countries. According to Robson, the sperm extraction could be done through a process known as postmortem sperm retrieval. “There are several main ways that sperm are harvested, including needle extraction. As the name suggests, this method involves inserting a needle into the testis and drawing out some sperm. It’s often used in live patients but because minimizing invasiveness does not matter in dead people, doctors tend to use other methods in post-mortem.

One of these approaches is to extract the testis or epididymis surgically. As the epididymis is where sperm go to mature, this tissue is a popular target. The doctor surgically removes the epididymis and milks it or otherwise separates the sperm from the tissue. Alternatively, the epididymis or a piece of testicular tissue can be frozen whole. A fourth option is rectal probe ejaculation, also known as electroejaculation. The doctor inserts a conductive probe into the man’s anus until it is next to the prostate. A jolt of electricity causes a muscle contraction that stimulates ejaculation of sperm through the usual channels”, he said. However, there are varying controversies regarding the ethics of post mortem sperm retrieval. For instance, The American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s position is that post-mortem sperm requests should be granted only to surviving spouses or life partners and that there must be a grief period prior to the sperm’s use. Other opinions and legal rulings vary, according to countries. In Israel, implied consent suffices — a deceased man need not have left a written document but his widow just has to say that she believes he would give consent were he alive to do so. The government may even provide financial assistance: state health insurance will pay for as many IVF cycles as needed to produce two babies. As for the rights of posthumously created children, after a 2007 court battle any child produced is considered the deceased man’s legal heir.

Some fertility clinics in the U.S. and elsewhere refuse to perform a post-mortem extraction if the person requesting is anyone other than the man’s wife or committed partner, unless he has left written instructions that state otherwise. France, Germany, Sweden and Canada are among the countries that prohibit posthumous sperm retrieval. In the United Kingdom, it is not allowed unless the man has given prior written consent. In the mid-1990s, the case of Diane Blood brought the issue into the public eye there. Diane and her husband Stephen had already begun trying for a family when Stephen died suddenly from meningitis. At first the courts in UK denied Diane’s request to have children using Stephen’s sperm, saying its collection had been illegal. But after appeal, she won the right to send the sperm outside the UK so she could undergo insemination in a more permissive country. Diane eventually gave birth to two boys with her husband’s sperm. Here in Nigeria, investigation reveals that this procedure has never been done. According to Prof. OladapoAshiru, a renowned IVF expert, such procedures can only be done with legal approval and consent. “However, a more acceptable procedure is extracting the sperm while the man is alive and using it to make babies after the man is dead”, he said.