We can harvest a cell from a newly fertilized egg , and the egg can continue to develop into a healthy human. We can use the harvested cell to create stem cells that can become any kind of tissue.
So how far a leap is it to doing by intent what happens occasionally in nature, splitting the little sprout and producing identical twins, or triplets, or ?? If I had to guess, I’d say we could pretty much do it now if somebody wanted to.
What kind of advances would be needed, if any, to do this?
BTW, I thought it would be very interesting if through frozen embryo technology, identical twins are born a few years apart, or even to different birth mothers. I have never heard of this, but it already is possible, I think. Can anyone tell me if this has happned?
I’m pretty sure that would be within the reach of today’s technology; it is a form of cloning, but not one that involves the insertion of different genetic material, so it’s less intrusive - I think it’s more or less a case of dividing the undifferentiated embryo at a stage when the number of cells is still in double figures, then allowing the two clumps to continue as normal.
There would still be all the risks and potential failures of implantation, except twice over, so the chances of successfully producing a pair of identical twins by this method would be less than the chance of success for a normal, single IVF treatment.
Monday evening there was a review of the case of “identical” twins" involved in the rape of two women (on TV).
They were NOT absolutely identical as one had a slight lisp that a juror picked up on. This broke the impasse.
Even “identical” twins do NOT have identical finger prints and a carefull physical exam would likely find small moles, etc. that would differentiate them.
However small such markings etc. could be signifigant in certain circumstances.
It’s been done in horses, almost becoming ‘commonplace’ for very valuable broodmares.
The eggs are captured from a valuable broodmare (sometimes chemically treated to produce more eggs). Then they are fertilized with the semen of a chosen stallion, and implanted into ‘host’ mares. The resulting foals are registered as being from the original mare & stallion. They are siblings, but not twins.
(The most I have heard of is 11 foals registered from the same mare within one year. And I heard that took some quick programming changes to the registration software to accept that.)
Note that this is only acceptable in breeds which allow Artifical Insemination. That excludes most of the racing breeds, which probably have the most valuable broodmares.