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This sudden influx of private funding is creating a lot of excitement, but also a lot of fears.
The rapid development of IVG raises ethical concerns
“This could take us into a kind of Gattaca world,” says Marcy Darnovsky, who runs the Center for Genetics and Society in Berkeley.
IVG could accelerate the rush toward all kinds of dystopian scenarios, including designer babies, Darnovsky says. “Combining IVG and genome editing and commercialization, you’ve really got kind of a toxic stew to create people who are supposedly biologically superior to others,” she says. “We don’t want to pave the road toward any kind of future that looks anything like that.”
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Ok… so before this thread heads out to the cornfield, tell me: am I overreacting? Is this just some weirdo idea that will never get any traction outside a lab? Like cloning human beings?
The folks at this lab are fools. They’re supposed to describe their work as generating totipotent stem cells from adult cells, because that’s fine and dandy and encouraged. Describing it this way makes it sound too much like cloning research, which is absolutely prohibited.
Yeah, think of all the genetic diseases we might be able to prevent with widespread genetic screening, and the human suffering that could be alleviated as a result! The horror!!!
No, this doesn’t sound like a weirdo idea or like cloning human beings at all. It sounds like a fantastic technological development that could first make it easier for couples who are having problems getting pregnant to do so, and later make reproduction safer for all of our future generations.
Why are you reacting with horror to this? Are you also horrified by regular IVF? What is the difference?
That’s pretty blind to demographic trends. China had the same attitude during their big population boom; now they’re predicted to lose half their population in the mext 30 years.
Anyways, the end goal would be to do this for as many pregnancies as possible, so we can take advantage of genetic screening. That’s the real benefit of this tech - increasing access to IVF and making the process much safer.
And THAT isn’t important because it’s a barrel of laughs - it’s important because it could prevent immense amounts of human suffering in future generations.
I expect it will succeed. Maybe not this particular attempt, but someone somewhere sometime is going to figure out how to get sperm from biological females, and eggs from biological males. After that, someone somewhere sometime is going to figure out how to incubate human embryos in an artificial womb.
And after that, we can send robot starships with the ingredients of human life to populate the galaxy, even if it takes thousands of years per voyage!
I didn’t read a single line about preventing genetic diseases. I may have missed it. The articles main topic was the benefits to same sex parents to produce biological children of their own.
The article was basically an interview with the company, that pitched their product (and yes their sales pitch is about same sex or infertile couples), coupled with interviews with critics. So that wasn’t the focus of the article. But an inherent benefit to IVF (unless you’re an idiot and decide to skip it for no reason) is the PGT - Preimplementation Genetic Test. The lab already has your fertilized eggs out in a dish - why on Earth would the eggs chosen for implementation NOT be screened for genetic diseases?
The cheaper and more available this tech becomes, the better.
Of course I’m not horrified by regular IVF. This isn’t IVF. This is engineering human eggs in a lab. It’s not screening eggs created in a human body-- it’s the step prior to that: creating the eggs themselves.
Yes, with ethical and moral guidelines that are followed rigorously by conscientious people, this technology could be a wonderful thing. I do not have that much faith in human nature when something comes along that people will pay anything and do anything to have access to. Maybe I’m wrong. I hope so.
That makes it sound so much more dramatic than it actually is. They aren’t building human eggs out of Soylent Green. They’re taking stem cells, that already have the capacity to turn into eggs (that’s where the eggs of every woman on the planet came from) and enabling them to go through that same process outside of the body.
There’s nothing mystical or special about Gameteogenesis, any more than fertilization itself. Whether it happens in an ovary or in a lab really doesn’t matter.
What harm, specifically, are you afraid that this technology would bring about?
