In a milestone breakthrough, researchers from Japan have successfully developed immature human egg cells from blood using advanced technology. Even though these immature eggs could not be developed to a complete human being, some experts believe that this development could emerge as a laying stone for similar experiments in the future.
Same-sex people have their own kid
During the experiment, researchers used blood to create induced pluripotent stem cells. These pluripotent stem cells were later inserted to artificial ovaries from where the immature human egg cells were developed.
If these kinds of experiments become a reality, it will help same-sex people to have kids with their own DNA. The success of this experiment may also revolutionize the fertility industry, as it allows people with serious infertility problems to have kids.
Ethical concerns arise
Hank Greely, a bioethicist at Stanford reveals that artificial making of eggs and sperms will open up various new ways by which humans could reproduce.
"If we can make human eggs and sperm from skin cells it opens up an enormous number of possibilities for changing how humans reproduce. For example, easy access to eggs might mean it would become routine to scan the DNA of embryos before anyone tries to have a baby. Doing genetic testing basically on a large chunk of every generation of babies before they even become fetuses – while they're still embryos – and having parents and potentially governments pick and chose which embryos go on to become babies. That has lots of implications," said Hank Greely, npr.org reports.
Ronald Green, a Dartmouth bioethicist too shared his concerns about these kinds of experiments.
"So there are some very weird possibilities emerging. A woman might want to have George Clooney's baby. And his hairdresser could start selling his hair follicles online. So we suddenly could see many, many progenies of George Clooney without his consent," said Green.
This is not the first time that controversial experiments are getting slammed by ethicists. In November 2017, controversial Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero claimed to have carried out the first head transplant. In the past, Canavero had conducted similar experiments in mice and pigs, but the success ratio of these experiments are maintained under the wraps.
As Canavero's claims went viral online, many people started blaming that head transplant will make billionaires live forever, and sometimes, they will even start killing people to find donors.
