New research has opened the door to the possibility that gay men could one day soon have children using just sperm with no need for a female donor egg. In a stunning breakthrough, scientists have created embryos from non-egg cells in mice, and believe they could recreate the process one day in other species.
The researchers explain that there are two types of cell: “meiotic” reproductive cells (eggs and sperm), and “mitotic” cells which include most of the tissues and organs in our bodies.
Mammal reproduction requires a sperm and egg to fuse, creating an embryo. But instead of using a meiotic egg cell to produce their mouse pups, the researchers used a type of mitotic cell called a parthenogenote. These are very early-stage, single-celled embryos that form without fertilisation — in this case by chemically activating a mouse egg.
Just before the parthenogenotes divided into two cells, they were injected with sperm nuclei to fertilise them. The resulting pups’ survival rate was a quarter that of other mice. Though these are early days, the feat suggested that other types of mitotic cell, such as skin cells, may one day be used to create offspring.
This could open up the possibility for gay men to have children with both men’s DNA.
In 1934, Cole Porter, renowned American tunesmith, wrote the following as part of the lyrics of one of his biggest hit songs, Anything Goes:
The world has gone mad today
And good's bad today,
And black's white today,
And day's night today...
Could Mister Porter possibly have imagined how prophetic those words would be! Genetic engineering has turned the biological world upside down. Modern research is constantly redefining the phsysiological boundaries and markers of human life. Asexual reproduction is decidedly in the forefront of contemporary genetic experimentation.
The ethical consequences and repercussions of such scientific investigation have yet to be fully understood or addressed.
Yet, I continue to ask those who delve into the complex mysteries of life this fundamental question: just because we can manipulate almost every aspect of human reproduction, should we do so? Should science pursue and traverse into every avenue which technological advancements make available to them? Should research establish ethical and moral boundaries beyond which exploration and experimentation ought not to proceed?
In 1818, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley penned the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a grotesque but sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. It is a moral tale of man’s vanity and arrogance before the creative majesty and power of Almighty God.
In the end, the human creation, a monster, destroys its human creator.
In its own way, modern science seeks to deny and usurp the power of the Divine Creator. In many ways, technological achievements may just create the monsters of today, monsters which may, just may, one day destroy not just the moral and ethical standards of humanity, but humanity itself.
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