French mother (62) says brother was father of her test-tube baby

In a case that raises unprecedented ethical, medical and legal questions, a 62-year-old retired French school teacher and her younger brother have admitted to test-tube incest leading to the birth of test-tube twins.

The story of Jeanine, Robert and their month-old twins is, as Le Monde commented: "the kind of story you have to explain to yourself twice to understand it. Three times to take it in. And ten times to grasp the full madness of it."

When Jeanine gave birth to a baby boy in the Cote d'Azur town of Frejus on May 14th, France was shocked. The French public health code forbids medically assisted procreation for women beyond child-bearing age. But Jeanine had gone to a clinic in California to have herself artificially inseminated. At 62, she was the oldest woman ever to give birth in France.

Then yesterday Jeanine revealed that her brother Robert (52) donated the sperm which fertilised the egg implanted in her, and which she carried to term. "My baby was not born of an incestuous union," she told Le Parisien newspaper. Genetically, the child belongs to Robert and the American woman who donated the egg.

Dr Vicken Sahakian of the Pacific Fertility Center in Los Angeles harvested several eggs from the American donor. One fertilised egg was implanted in Jeanine; the other was reimplanted in the donor, who gave birth to a baby girl. Thus twins, genetically both the children of Robert and the egg donor, were born eight days apart, halfway around the world.

Robert and Jeanine travelled to California to collect their daughter/niece and bring her to France, where the two babies are being raised by the "couple", neither of whom ever married and who live with their 80 year-old mother. Robert is disfigured by a failed suicide attempt.

Jeanine described the undertaking, which cost £135,000, as "a mutual favour my brother and I did each other. I could no longer transmit my genetic heritage because of my age, so I wanted to pass on my brother's and create a life so our line could continue." She and Robert pretended to be married when they went to Dr Sahakian's clinic. French social services are investigating.