Last year, Japanese researchers announced that mice with healthy reproductive capabilities were born using eggs created from cells at the tip of the tail of a male mouse. The male's eggs were fertilized with regular sperm to produce offspring with two fathers. Reproductive biologist Katsuhiko Hayashi, who led the research at Kyushu University, believes it will be technically possible to create viable human eggs from male skin cells within 10 years. tutelar.
This achievement builds on previous work done in 2017 by another team of Japanese researchers, who created mouse eggs from tail tip cells and produced healthy offspring. In 2021, another Japanese research group using mouse stem cells created sperm that produced healthy, fertile offspring.
Now researchers from private biotech companies such as Conception Bio and Gameto are racing to see if they can develop IVG (in vitro gametogenesis) technology as a way for postmenopausal women, infertile couples, and same-sex couples to have biologically safe births. I'm doing it. Children involved. Perhaps single men may have biological children in the future through solitary reproduction, where they can produce both sperm and eggs combined.
Keep in mind that only seven healthy rat pups were born from the 630 two-father embryos implanted by the Japanese researchers. Therefore, serious technical hurdles must first be addressed before IVG can be used to deliver human babies. However, some people are opposed to pursuing human births using IVG even after IVG becomes as safe as conventional or in vitro fertilization (IVF) births.
IVG “distorts the sanctity of procreation, a fundamental aspect of human life,” said Ben Hurlbut, a bioethicist at Arizona State University. USA Today. “Making this an industrial project that inspires and nurtures the needs of future customers,” he added. Marcy Darnovsky, director of the left-wing Center for Genetics and Society, told NPR that IVG “is making us a kind of Gattaca (She was referring to the 1997 science fiction film in which a eugenic state is ruled by people born with genetically enhanced abilities.) federalist, Jordan Boyd argues that by developing IVG, “the global fertility industry is trying to eliminate women from giving birth one manufactured egg at a time.”
The National Academy of Sciences addresses many of these ethical issues in its Proceedings of the In Vitro Derived Human Germ Cell Conference, published in October 2023. This report summarizes the results of a meeting on the topic convened by NAS in April 2023.
Far from “wiping out women,” IVG will allow infertile women to produce as many eggs as they want without having to endure treatments such as ovarian stimulation to produce enough eggs to be successful with conventional IVF. .
Hurlbut is right that many people regard childbirth as a ‘fundamental aspect of human life’. This is especially true for the 9% of men and 11% of women of childbearing age in the United States who experience infertility issues. Then there are people past normal reproductive age and same-sex couples who want to have biologically related children. The launch of safe IVG will not be an “industrial project” but will fulfill the desire of future customers to start a family.
How about Gattaca fear? “Combining IVG with polygenic risk screening could revolutionize embryo selection capabilities,” the report acknowledged. Polygenic risk screening (PRS) comprehensively analyzes each embryo for genetic variants that increase the likelihood of developing a specific disease or trait. This is similar to the already widely accepted practice of preimplantation genetic diagnosis during IVF, where parents test and select embryos to avoid harmful genetic conditions. PRS will improve prospective parents' ability to select preferred trait combinations from a larger number of embryos.
Rather than restricting the use of PRS, Stanford University bioethicist Hank Greely suggested that “it is generally better for people to rely on their parents' choices when making decisions about how they want to raise their families.” . This is generally based on the reasonable assumption that parents are trying to provide the best life possible for their potential offspring. The unfortunate history of eugenics laws in the United States, where tens of thousands of people were forcibly sterilized in the 20th century, should make anyone cautious about government intervention in people's reproductive choices, including the use of safe IVG. As Michele Goodwin, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, rightly points out, “Over time, the involvement of the law in reproductive issues has served to undermine civil liberties and civil rights.”