Scientists are making gains towards the possibility of using skin or blood cells to create babies, without the need for sex, and it’s causing a stir. The process goes much further than the widely known IVF procedure which combines the sperm and egg in a test tube. Called in vitro gametogenesis (IVG), the technology is still around a decade away, and will involve creating human life from cells other than sperm and eggs.
In a recent advance, researcher Katsuhiko Hayashi exhibited the transformation of adult male mice skin cells into healthy eggs. Only a tiny fraction of the mouse eggs he created were viable, however, healthy mice successfully spawned from these cells and were able to reproduce on their own with pups and then grand pups. Hayashi also established a process to use the adult male mouse cells to make viable sperm.
Hayashi confidently predicts that this same approach can be used to treat infertility in humans, and could also facilitate the birth of a child who is biologically related to both parents from a same-sex couple.
“My primary wish is to contribute to helping people suffering from infertility,” Hayashi stated in a recent interview. “What I am doing now is very basic biology.”
In last week’s three-day meeting at the National Academy of Sciences, scientists enthusiastically conversed about their findings, advocates collaborated about the logistics of making IVG beneficial, and ethicists voiced concern. While the research may be fueled by curiosity, all agree it will be implemented as a money-maker in the infertility market for those who want to continue their biological lines, or for those who simply want to choose their offspring’s characteristics.
“It is a perversion of the sanctity of procreation as a fundamental aspect of human life,” said Ben Hurlbut, Arizona State University’s bioethicist and historian of science. “It makes it into an industrial project that responds to and also inspires and cultivates the desires of their future customers.”
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