My female partner and I are desperately keen to have a child but in order to do this, we have to get some donor sperm. We have been told we could now buy freshly-donated semen via the internet. Is this true, doctor?

There are indeed internet firms which will "bike round" fresh sperm to single or lesbian women for a fee of about £500. However, I really wouldn't recommend this procedure because the risks that the sperm might be infected or defective are too great. If you definitely want to conceive using donated sperm, it would be safer to go to one of the properly-regulated insemination clinics in London or Eastbourne, where health checks on donors are pretty rigorous. To find out more, just put the words "artificial insemination clinics" into Google.