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UK Scientists to Create Embryo From Two Women
An anonymous reader wrote to mention a BBC story about a UK research group that has been given permission to create a human embryo with genetic material from two women. From the article: "The groundbreaking work aims to prevent mothers from passing certain genetic diseases on to their unborn babies. The researchers are focusing on a group of conditions called mitochondrial myopathy, which include types of muscular dystrophy. These cause muscle weakness and wasting, making it difficult to move normally - some may need to use a wheelchair. At present no treatment for these exists, although things can be done to help with the symptoms. "
This is not anything like "eliminating men". They're not even recombining two women's DNA - they're using using the mitochondrial DNA from one and the combined nuclear DNA from a male and female pair.
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I realise this is a joke, but it should be noted that the first egg is fertilised.
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"One of the four pointers saying 'come and see', and I saw, and beheld a white
This is basically a new surrogate mother approach. Nothing more. The article still mentions the need for sperm. "The result would be an embryo with pronuclei DNA from the parental egg and sperm but mitochondria - and mitochondrial DNA - from the donor egg."
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"UK Scientists to Create Embryo From Two Women"
There's no way they can fit two women into the tiny package of an embryo - where does the excess material go?
Joking aside...
1. They're not making an embryo - they're making a zygote. Which, with any luck, turns into an embryo, foetus, baby, person.
2. This still involves a man. They're taking one bit of genetic information from one woman - skipping the section where genes are considered out of whack. Then they take -that- section from another woman - where they're considered to be in order. Then they splice those two together and re-insert it into the egg cell. Next up, they get funky with the guy's sperm and do a regular ol' petri-dish fertilization.
Oh yes, but where will it stop? What are the etical boundaries in the next 20 years?
This technology -=might=- harm the human race indeed. I'm not kidding! Now they are eliminating genetic diseases, next they are propagating "good" genes (like brain-development and "kindness"), next they are building the supreme human, and before we know it, by forgetting all about the fact that the human genome is far more complex then any human could begin to understand, we have created a new race of homo sapiens that is showing us we did something terribly and irreversably wrong (no, I'm not talking about them taking over the world... watch a sci-fi for that one...).
Why is it that all the great scientist in the most advanced technological fields (nuclear fusion, AI, biotechnology) are warning from time to time for disastrous side effects while the popular scientist and the politics are propagating the opposite? Will we until our end try to "advance" against the tides?
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No... most people have a natural urge to have children. Nothing to do with society.