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Fertilize Egg Without Sperm
FERTILIZE EGG WITHOUT SPERM??
Sounds imppossible? well guess what? A group of scientist in Austrailia, have discovered a way to fertilize egg without sperm. The article reads:
Scientists in Australia have found a way to fertilize eggs using genetic material from any cell in the body - and not just sperm.
The technique could potentially help infertile couples to have children.
Theoretically, it also could mean that lesbian couples could give birth to a baby girl without the need for a father. Women do not carry the genetic information required to make a boy.
The technique has been developed by Dr Orly Lacham-Kaplan, from Monash University in Melbourne.
She told the BBC that her team had been able to successfully fertilize mice eggs in lab cultures using other cells in the body known as somatic cells.
Until now this has not been possible because somatic cells contain two sets of chromosomes, while sperm cells only contain one set.
The Monash team used chemical techniques to get rid of the spare set of chromosomes.
Separation
To do this they mimicked the process that takes place during normal fertilization when two sets of chromosomes in an egg are separated and one is ejected, leaving the remaining set to combine with the single set from the sperm.
However, they will not know if the embryos were viable until they were transferred to foster mothers for further development.
"We will then have to wait to see if any live and healthy babies are born following those transfers.
"Within the next six to eight months I believe we will have the answer, and see whether this technology can go further and be used maybe in clinical aspects."
Dr Lacham-Kaplan said she had started her work to help men who were unable to have children because they had no sperm, or germ cells with the potential to become sperm.
But she added: "Theoretically, we can use somatic cells from a female to produce the same embryo.
"So two women who wish to have their own biological children would be able maybe to use this technology to achieve that aim."
However, this could prove problematical as aspects of development are controlled by a paternal gene.
Revolutionary
Fertility expert Professor Robert Winston told the BBC: "This is actually genuinely revolutionary and potentially very important.
"The real advantage of this technique is for men who cannot produce sperm. Hitherto it has always been said they could clone themselves.
"The beauty of this technique is that it makes cloning completely unnecessary. This actually is a much better technique and ethically much more acceptable because you have chromosomes from two partners."
Professor Winston said it was theoretically possible for a person to reproduce themselves using the technique.
However, the use of chromosomes from the same person massively increased the risk that a baby would suffer from genetic defects.
The Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC) was outraged by the technique.
A spokesman said: "The proliferation of novel ways to produce embryos is increasingly reducing the human being to a commodity in many people's eyes.
"We believe the interests of the child come before the wishes of anyone else, including the parents. We shall be calling for a moratorium on this kind of development."
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/hea...00/1431489.stm
Ladies, I guess we know what this means. If this is very successful and widespread, lesbians or infertile couples will be able to have children whenever they please. I wonder what the fellows have to say. Whats your input on this?
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Re: Fertilize Egg Without Sperm
*runs from the jurassic park dinosaurs*
LIFE WILL FIND A WA- ok, seriously... wow! that's very interesting, very promising for certain individuals/couples, and potentially terrible as we realize the uselessness of the male speci- ok, i keed, i keed. :D
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Re: Fertilize Egg Without Sperm
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Embyr
*runs from the jurassic park dinosaurs*
LIFE WILL FIND A WA- ok, seriously... wow! that's very interesting, very promising for certain individuals/couples, and potentially terrible as we realize the uselessness of the male speci- ok, i keed, i keed. :D
Even with a news like that, I think men still play an important role in human evolution....a male figure is still significant in the life of a child.
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Re: Fertilize Egg Without Sperm
Oh dear that's my university.
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Re: Fertilize Egg Without Sperm
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Originally Posted by
jaizaine
Oh dear that's my university.
How cool! :)
This is so fascinating. Who woulda thunkit? I wonder if there are any problems down the line. It'll be interesting once they try this with human subjects.
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Re: Fertilize Egg Without Sperm
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Originally Posted by
LadySoft
Even with a news like that, I think men still play an important role in human evolution....a male figure is still significant in the life of a child.
umm, i do hope you saw the part (that you subsequently quoted) where I said "I keed?" as in, "i'm kidding?" Of course we need males. I'm not about to argue something as ridiculous as the necessity of an entire gender.
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I'm sorry, but this is WRONG. I find it highly unethical to invest money and scientific resources in these increasingly bizarre ways to create more people while there are already too many people here, including millions of children who need homes and loving families. These people should've been working on a cure for cancer or something.
Heaven forfend anyone should fucking ADOPT a child who's already here. ::)
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Re: Fertilize Egg Without Sperm
^ well i don't know if they've tried it on human beings yet... i doubt the legislature would approve of it... so far they've only tried it on rats, and most of the experiments conducted nowadays are done on animals.
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We are not overpopulated, calm your nerves Malthus.
We have too much GOVERNMENT, but not too many people. The US, for example, is very sparsely populated.
We could easily produce enough food to feed 20billion people without a sweat, but government regulations ensure that food costs way more than it should. And it is the poor of course who suffer most from this.
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Re: Fertilize Egg Without Sperm
^ Way to seriously oversimplify things, dude.
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Re: Fertilize Egg Without Sperm
Well, why do it at all? What purpose does this serve to better the world? It's wasting vast sums of money and scientific endeavor on useless, unethical experimentation. I'm getting really fed up with all these "scientists" fooling around with reproduction just to see if they CAN do stuff, without considering whether they should or why it would ever be necessary. Especially since while they're doing this, my grandmother is DYING of pancreatic cancer and puking up her toenails every day on chemotherapy and outdated drugs.
We don't NEED to create more people. We do need to better our world. These resources would have been much better spent elsewhere.
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I don't care what people do with scientific research and/or their eggs as long as I don't have to pay for it. It doesn't have to "improve the world" as long as it satisfies somebody's non-aggressive desires. Maybe two lesbians want to spawn another lesbian.
Who is to say "We" don't need more people? That's up to the couple involved, as I see it. I made a personal choice not to have children, but that's just me.
The main problem with a lot of "science" is that it only exists because of tax-funded research. If we divorce science and government, there could really be no complaints from what comes of it. I predict various new ways to reproduce would still be studied, however.
Quote:
^ Way to seriously oversimplify things, dude.
The details are legion, but the above was pretty accurate. Even in the US alone we can compare the world prices for food for several products and see that regulation has made them sometimes double and triple of the world market prices. Farmers have one of the strongest lobbies in the country and they lobby to keep competition out, including INTRA-national competition on a state level.
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I'm not talking about government, Sh0t, I'm talking about ethics.
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Re: Fertilize Egg Without Sperm
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Originally Posted by
Sh0t
I don't care what people do with scientific research and/or their eggs as long as I don't have to pay for it. It doesn't have to "improve the world" as long as it satisfies somebody's non-aggressive desires. Maybe two lesbians want to spawn another lesbian.
Who is to say "We" don't need more people? That's up to the couple involved, as I see it. I made a personal choice not to have children, but that's just me.
The main problem with a lot of "science" is that it only exists because of tax-funded research. If we divorce science and government, there could really be no complaints from what comes of it. I predict various new ways to reproduce would still be studied, however.
The details are legion, but the above was pretty accurate. Even in the US alone we can compare the world prices for food for several products and see that regulation has made them sometimes double and triple of the world market prices. Farmers have one of the strongest lobbies in the country and they lobby to keep competition out, including INTRA-national competition on a state level.
Darlin', a lot of the world is 3rd and trades rice for chickens. Why don't we just go back to the barter system? Your logic is flawed. Also, 'world market prices'.... way to sum up the entire world 'compared to America' in one sentence. Because they're aren't like 10 different types of government, twenty different types of economy and eight billion fuckin' people in the world with different ideals and thoughts. Y'know, America is it's own little world and 'the rest of the world' is completely seperate. That's such close-minded thinking.
And let's not even get started on your lesbian's breeding lesbians comment.
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Re: Fertilize Egg Without Sperm
Sh0t:
You've written elsewhere regarding yourself "My threads go platinum" (one of my favorite Sh0tisms) and "Revving flopping thread again I see." You also appear knowledgeable on a variety of topics, so you are apparently well-read. At times, I agree with your statements--or I can at least follow your logic.
What confuses me is whether your casually lobbed absurdities are shared for inflammatory effect or truly reflect your belief system. If you're joking, you seem to cling to your punchlines with an obstinance that obscures their humor. If you're serious, your beer hall pontifications aren't swaying the SW intelligentsia.
Myself, I think you enjoy baiting posters on this forum, so I can't put you on "Ignore" because you're never dull. Whenever I see a heated response to one of your assertions, I think "Well, if you play with a puppy, you'll get licked in the mouth"...
The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.
- William James, American Philosopher
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Re: Fertilize Egg Without Sperm
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Originally Posted by
Yekhefah
I'm sorry, but this is WRONG. I find it highly unethical to invest money and scientific resources in these increasingly bizarre ways to create more people while there are already too many people here, including millions of children who need homes and loving families. These people should've been working on a cure for cancer or something.
Heaven forfend anyone should fucking ADOPT a child who's already here. ::)
It's really fucking sad that homosexuals and older people are barred from adoption, yet they can spend unholy amounts of money to get themselves fertilized. it's such a waste.
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Before this thread turns into a flame war, I'd like to point out that no one got my cute little reference before.
I mentioned Jurassic Park for a reason. The dinosaurs were able to reproduce because they'd been given some amphibian DNA where cells could fertilize themselves without sperm... no one remembers? the *switching sex* frogs??? (or something..... it was a while ago.) anyway, that's why the reason all the dinosaurs were FEMAle.... because, just like in this report, they didn't have the genetic material necessary to make baby boy dinosaurs. (:P :P )
sooo... good for the researchers and all, but the information isn't exactly new. we're just going from frogs to rats. or something.
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You mean I can make my own army now for the apocalypse when the earth has finally had enough?:alien: :alien: :alien: :alien: :wizard:
Yea really we should be working on making more food to feed the people we already have here. Its kind of a waste of money to develop something like this when HIV has exploded over the last few decades.
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Hat/Yek:
You're both right. Although Los Angeles County is more liberal than many parts of the country regarding gay/lesbian/elderly adoptive parents, not enough people step up to the challenge here, either...
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Re: Fertilize Egg Without Sperm
Did anyone notice the date on the article? It's 10 July, 2001.
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We could literally eat for pennies(for the raw material anyway, chefs are another story) but various forms of protectionism prevent it.
There is only one type of government really: too much. Every government rests on the idea of aggressive force being justified for "public good", whatever that means.
If we wanted to spend tax money wisely, fighting HIV would be one of the worse ways, as it is not a major killer compared to things like cancer, heart disease(a politically incorrect disease), etc. It gets a tremendous share of money way over the proportion of lives it takes. Assuming one believes HIV kills anybody to begin with(a view I do not hold).
What is unethical about two people who can't come together via nature to have a way to unite and form a third person? At one point, the idea of miscegenation was abhorred, more violently than anybody will oppose two lesbians using technology to reproduce. I predict some feminists will come out and say the best way to improve the human race is to allow women to mate. Maybe they'd be right, I dunno.
Men are the abnormality anyway. We're just around to provide some diversity to stave off disease. The Bible got it backwards.
Adoption is great and would be a lot better if we had a free market in babies(for all sexual orientations), but I can also understand the draw of wanting your own genetic spawn. I can't RELATE, but I can understand. What is important is up to each individual. To some people, having genetic offspring is more important than adoption.
For those of you who believe in abortion, which is a woman controlling her own body to REDUCE life, how can you oppose this, which would be a woman using medicine to create life, and with a partner of her choosing(another woman).
To Budai,
I actually do hold some beliefs that some people consider strange, but I predict they will be mainstream soon. I also enjoy baiting posters on here, but only as a side-effect of promoting something I really believe in.
The long adoption process is one reason why people don't adopt more often If buying a baby was as easy as buying a puppy, more people would do it.
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Gay people aren't banned from adoption. Certain sources may refuse them, but plenty of other sources won't. And sure, some people WANT genetic offspring and are perfectly willing to let a living child starve in an orphanage so they can have it. That doesn't make that ethical, and it certainly doesn't mean they have an unalienable right to bizarre and expensive medical tactics to satisfy their vanity.
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Re: Fertilize Egg Without Sperm
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Originally Posted by
sun child
Did anyone notice the date on the article? It's 10 July, 2001.
Im going to guess babies werent made...
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Re: Fertilize Egg Without Sperm
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Originally Posted by
Yekhefah
Gay people aren't banned from adoption. Certain sources may refuse them, but plenty of other sources won't. And sure, some people WANT genetic offspring and are perfectly willing to let a living child starve in an orphanage so they can have it. That doesn't make that ethical, and it certainly doesn't mean they have an unalienable right to bizarre and expensive medical tactics to satisfy their vanity.
But - why is it ok for women to have multiple children they cant care for yet unethical for people to go to measures to have a child of their own that they can care for. Thats all. I understand wanting a child and not adopting. You want to carry your family genes, to carry the baby, be pregnant, give birth, etc that you just dont get from adopting.
I just come from having a friend with multiple children she cannot care for - its unfair for her to keep having unwanted babies yet for women/men/couples that have the means emotionally/mentally/physically/financially (that she does not have, ANY of them) to not be able to conceive and be banned from having children.
If youre going to ban stuff like the article (if it had worked) or in vetro then you should go around tieing the tubes of all these women having unwanted pregnancies/babies. That way the babies born will be wanted ones and we dont have to worry about over-population or adoption or orphanages.
Ugh, ethical matters are a mess...