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This is good news (ethical concerns aside). Overview of how it works, from the article (it's not terribly well-written - correct me if i've misunderstood):
1) Woman provides donor ovum (this is one reason why it doesn't completely solve our problems - it doesn't remove women altogether from the reproductive process. Men need this ability to counter the opposite discoveries on the other side of the fence).
2) Genetic material removed from ovum.
3) The 'mother' of the homosexual couple provides DNA from a body cell, which is injected into the ovum. This ovum - now a zygote - will start cleaving. It has all 46 chromosomes (from the 'mother' homo).
4) The embryo at some point is destroyed and the stem cells are harvested. (ethical problem - destruction of embryo)
5) The stem cells are scientifically massaged into an ovum. Obviously this ovum will have the exact same genetic material as the 'mother'.
6) Ovum is fertilised with sperm from the 'father'.
7) Resulting zygote implanted in surrogate mother (same problem as 1) - artificial wombs aren't a reality yet)
So clearly it's not a panacea, but a useful development nonetheless.
Now that's out of the way, the rant:
>The researchers hope that the technique will remove one of the ethical concerns relating to "therapeutic" cloning -- mainly that scores of women would have to donate eggs, thus creating a money-for-eggs market among poor women. With this process, they say, eggs can be plentiful.
They're solving a problem which doesn't, or more accurately, shouldn't exist. Scores of women donating ova thus creating a money-for-ova market. Isn't that the reverse of what sperm banks do? (Granted, that's for reproduction, not cloning, but the relevant parts are the same - donation of gametes for money, with the irrelevant exception that in the above process, the female ovum donor's genetic material is removed). What's intrinsically wrong with paying women for ova? There's nothing wrong with paying men for sperm, is there? (re irrelevant exception above).
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by Anonymous User on Thursday July 17, @03:48AM EST (#2)
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You have well understood the whole process.
Anyway, I'll add something concerning the following point you made :
> Woman provides donor ovum (this is one reason why it doesn't completely solve our problems - it doesn't remove women altogether from the reproductive process. Men need this ability to counter the opposite discoveries on the other side of the fence).
Actually women have become redundant, let me tell you why : men need only one egg from one female and that's all. When the cloned embryo is destroyed, the stem cells are being harvested as you said, and can be turned into an infinite supply of ovums. That's to say that scientists can obtain a virtually limitless number of male ovums out of the stem cells coming from only one male cloned embryo. Then each one of these male ovums can be used to restarting the step number one of the process (aka the donor ovum) to clone another man willing to be a "mother", but this time scientists don't need a woman anymore to achieving this, as they have male ovums at disposal. You just have to keep in mind that with stem cells of only one cloned embryo, you can obtain an infinite number of eggs and not just one as you seem to think.
To sum up, once only one woman has given an egg, then theorically men don't depend on women any more to get another donor ovum, as it is male ovums created in an infinite number from stem cells out of the first cloned man that can be used.
Having only one ovum to obtain in the first place for the first cloned man isn't very difficult, and this is not something to be worried about. The last barrier for male reproductive independance is artificial wombs, and the current need for a surrogate mother.
> Scores of women donating ova thus creating a money-for-ova market. Isn't that the reverse of what sperm banks do?
Actually, they're right to be concerned about this, because women produce during their life a very limited number of eggs ; men within the same period of time produce countless reproductive gametes in their sperm.
Rage
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>You have well understood the whole process.
That's a relief! 8-)
>To sum up, once only one woman has given an egg, then theorically men don't depend on women any more to get another donor ovum, as it is male ovums created in an infinite number from stem cells out of the first cloned man that can be used.
Doh - that should have been obvious from the blurb (erm, mustn't have read it, sorry) and from point 5). Oops!
So it relies on an infinite supply of stem cells - which can be cultured in a lab like any other cell, I am assuming.
>The last barrier for male reproductive independance is artificial wombs, and the current need for a surrogate mother.
Exactly. Women are still in the loop by surrogacy, and if surrogacy is outlawed or weakened* to force men to women for reproduction**, then we'll _need_ artificial wombs to kick women out altogether. Although, artificial wombs could be outlawed just as easily as surrogacy.
(*) outlawing legal surrogacy contracts, for example; surrogacy itself would still be legal but without the umbrella of contract law men would be subject to the surrogate-keeps-the-baby type crap that you hear about every so often.
(**) think about it, this is a form of protectionism, except not in the economic sphere, by outlawing competition to the current female reproduction monopoly.
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In the mad dash to create more 'markets' for human reproduction, a few things are being overlooked:
1. How new humans are formed exactly is not yet fully understood, even in the context of standard form of reproduction (ie, good old fashioned fertilization in utero by sperm). There's no reason to believe that this new process would result in any kind of satisfactory result in terms of predictably stable and well-formed human lives (ie, attainment of full normal development and an absence of process defects). Experiments of many kinds would be required. Ethically, it is really a bad idea. Would you want to be the result of experiment #3458, alive and conscious but with three legs and one ear? Experiments on animals are bad enough (I think they don't do much good, frankly, but that is another story). Experimenting on people, even in creating people, is a bad idea.
2. Nature has produced a means of stable reproduction that has resulted in the evolution of all manner of life, the higher forms (mammalian) in particular. Our survival is a testament to it. It's not by accident that crossing genes from two different kinds of chrmosomes (X and Y) in creating new life forms has resulted in the creation of highly robust creatures. It is found in all manner of animal life. Second-guessing the evolutionary process and then trying to mess with it is done only at great risk, I feel.
3. We have an overage of humans as it is. Why do we keep looking for ways to make more? This is like breeding cats and dogs. There is no reason for making more humans/cats/dogs while there are already too many living in destitution or are otherwise screwed.
This whole reproductive independence thing (in terms of process of reproduction-- the matter of rights, we all know, is terribly lopsided and needs to be redressed more to do justice for men) has gone way too far. It'd be bad if the men's movement bought into the idea that men and women have little need for each other at all-- complete separate autonomous reporoduction for both sexes would eventually lead to the end of humanity.
What do I care though. I'll be croaked likely by 2050 and none of this new stuff will be 'perfected' until then anyway.
I think I will pick a different planet/universe/realm/dimension/form/whatever to go to in the next life. This one is getting too weird.
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by Anonymous User on Thursday July 17, @12:03PM EST (#5)
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This breakthrough isn't about messing with the evolutionary process or creating new forms of human life. It is about finding new ways to creating exactly the same humans as usual. IVF is an anti-natural experiment which turned out to be very effective and successful for creating babies, who have grown normal like all the other human beings. And IVF isn't natural at all, and people used to speak against it 25 years ago on ethical grounds just like you did in your message.
It is not about creating monsters. It is about giving two men in love with each other the ability to have babies.
> It'd be bad if the men's movement bought into the idea that men and women have little need for each other at all-- complete separate autonomous reporoduction for both sexes would eventually lead to the end of humanity.
I agree with you of course. Unlike gender feminists, men's activists don't want to see women fading away, they are only seeking for gender equality.
But please remember that even in your hypothesis of both sexes becoming autonomous, gay men would have an extraordinary advantage over lesbians, because unlike them, by mixing two men's chromosomes sets together, one can make either a boy or a girl. And women wouldn't have this ability. So even if the genders fell apart, we would still live with our girls and women, made out of our genes, while women would leave in their sad female-only world, without being able to create boys...
Once all these techniques will be achieved, we men will reproduce the whole humanity by ourselves. One can then put into question the relevance of females for human reproduction in the coming centuries.
Rage
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"One can then put into question the relevance of females for human reproduction in the coming centuries."
This is the kind of thing that concerns me. I think there are times when we sound like our opponents. Consider this statement:
"With ovum-ovum fusion, one can then put into question the relevance of males for human reproduction in the coming centuries."
If you read that statement from some NOW piggie, wouldn't you condemn it as misandrist?
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If you read that statement from some NOW piggie, wouldn't you condemn it as misandrist?
A lot of men have good reason for being angry. In part because of that, we have to be ever vigilant that our defense doesn't evolve into offense.
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Agreed. If we start being wrong while they continue to be, we lose our moral basis of authority for demands fo change and action-- which at this point is all we have to work with (ie, we don't have the luxury of being indulgently wrong about things as the fem-bots are-- and neither do they, come to think of it.)
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I'd reject their statement for the mere reason that with ovum-ovum fusion, one can only give birth to females.
With male sperm and male ovums, one can give birth to both males and females, because men have both Y and X chromosome.
So men could reproduce the whole human kind, whereas women could reproduce only one half of human kind.
If these techniques were finally perfected, men would have an advantage over women.
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by Anonymous User on Thursday July 17, @08:27PM EST (#10)
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>>>>>We have an overage of humans as it is. Why do we keep looking for ways to make more? This is like breeding cats and dogs. There is no reason for making more humans/cats/dogs while there are already too many living in destitution or are otherwise screwed.>>>>complete separate autonomous reporoduction for both sexes would eventually lead to the end of humanity.
You say that as if it were a BAD thing, heh. =)
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