Log on to www.beautifulpeople.com to help conceive your beautiful baby

People wanting to have beautiful babies can now do so after an online dating and community website launched a virtual sperm and egg bank.

Beautifulpeople.com, which accepts members only if other members think they are attractive enough, started its new Beautiful Baby Service for those who cannot have children to be matched with potential donors.

A number of men have also registered to help infertile couples or single women to conceive healthy, attractive offspring.

"Initially, we hesitated to widen the offering to non-beautiful people," Sky News quoted founder Robert Hintze as saying.

"But everyone - including ugly people - would like to bring good looking children in to the world, and we can't be selfish with our attractive gene pool," he said.

One member said finding a partner, who is physically attractive, can ensure the child will also be good looking, thus giving it an edge over the others.

But Dr David King from watchdog group Human Genetics Alert thinks the scheme is at best ethically questionable.

"It's the symptom of a very dangerous tendency in our society, a eugenic tendency I think, that says we can take control of everything to do with reproduction and have it exactly the way we want it," he said.

"I think the outcome of it, if we allow that to go forward, will be very dangerous for our society," he added.