Scientists grow sperm from stem cells

Okay, that's a pretty creepy picture.

Scientists have turned stem cells from an embryo into sperm that are capable of producing offspring, it was announced yesterday. The advance in reproductive science raises new opportunities to treat male infertility and the possibility that women could make sperm. The professor behind the research believes that, when safe, the advance could help men with certain types of infertility to become fertile, to remain fertile for longer and, controversially, could even one day enable a lesbian couple to have children that, at the genetic level, are truly their own. The experiment used embryo cells to produce seven baby mice, six of which lived to adulthood, though the survivors suffered problems of the kind also seen with cloning. - telegraph