Guide

Will Two Men Ever Have a Biological Child Together?

Not yet, and not legally anywhere today — but the underlying science is real: in 2023, researchers at Osaka University created viable mouse pups from two male mice by reprogramming skin cells into egg cells, a proof of concept for in vitro gametogenesis (IVG). Applying this to humans is currently blocked by both unsolved technical challenges and explicit international guidelines (ISSCR) that prohibit reproductive use of IVG in humans for now.

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Key facts

Today, two men cannot have a child genetically related to both of them — reproduction still requires an egg cell and a uterus, so gestational surrogacy with a donor egg is the current path to a biological child for a male couple (related to one father, plus the egg donor, not both).
The research direction that could change this is in vitro gametogenesis (IVG): reprogramming ordinary body cells into stem cells, then coaxing those stem cells into functioning sperm or egg cells in a lab, entirely outside the body.
This isn't purely theoretical. In March 2023, Katsuhiko Hayashi's team at Osaka University published a method in Nature that took skin cells from male mice, removed the Y chromosome, duplicated the X chromosome, and grew the resulting cells into egg cells inside a lab-grown artificial ovary. Fertilized with sperm from another male mouse and transplanted into surrogate female mice, 7 of 630 embryos developed into live, healthy pups — two of which were later confirmed fertile as adults.
That mouse experiment still required a female mouse to carry the pregnancy — IVG replaces the need for one parent's genetic contribution, not the need for a uterus. A human application would still need a gestational carrier (a surrogate, or eventually an artificial womb) unless paired with separate ectogenesis research.
As of 2026, the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) — the field's leading guideline body — explicitly places human reproductive use of IVG in a restricted category: not permitted at this time. This is a live conversation, not settled law — the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) published a dedicated ethics committee opinion on IVG in 2026, reflecting active ongoing debate.

Legal considerations

No country currently permits IVG for human reproduction — this is a scientific research restriction from professional bodies (ISSCR, ASRM), not yet a settled area of national law, precisely because no country has had to legislate around a technology that doesn't work in humans yet.
If IVG research eventually succeeds in humans, expect the same jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction patchwork already seen with IVF and surrogacy elsewhere in this Knowledge Hub — some countries permitting it under strict clinical oversight, others banning it outright, on a timeline likely measured in years after any technical breakthrough, not immediately following one.

Timeline

2023: proof of concept in mice — live, fertile offspring produced from two male genetic parents, published in Nature.
2026 (present): human application remains blocked by unresolved technical challenges (human stem cell biology is substantially harder to direct than mouse biology) and by explicit guideline prohibitions on reproductive use.
No credible source currently gives a specific year for human clinical availability — every serious source hedges with 'may one day' rather than committing to a date, and this article won't invent one either.

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