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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. "
If they are trying to prevent mitocondrial diseases from being passed on, I take it they are using the egg cell from one mother with the neclious removed, and implanting DNA from another in there? That way, they'll have the mitocondria from one, but the DNA from another. A man's DNA will need to be added to the egg in order to reproduce. So really it's Two woman and one man. Or are they actualy somehow doing meosis with two eggs?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Years ago (1995), I gave a presentation as a graduate student about the increasing representation of men as sex objects much in the same way that women had long been characterized: anxious, vapid, to-be-looked-at as opposed to about-to-do-something, etc.
In the Q & A, someone asked about gender or some such other, and I remember responding that what I really found fascinating was that though much popular thinking surrounded the creation of artificial wombs, women would soon be able to reproduce without the aid of men. The response I received was tepid to say the least. People, especially straight women, don't want to hear about a society without men.
Of course, cloning was always a possibility but for complex mammals cloning has less that desirable results (for now). This development means that a woman-only state, municipality, sect, etc. is possible and could conceivably reproduce itself in perpetuity.
Just a few thoughts.
blog
general strategy for not passing off genetic defects is to not have children. duh.
It's not exactly hard to read something that was published on Thursday, 8 September 2005, 16:50 GMT 17:50 UK before now.
they're not combining the DNA from 2 women to create 1 child. With a normal child, etc. all the mitochondria come from the mother. Father's sperm doesn't have any play in this. So its 100% inheritance from the mother.
this disease is passed on within the mitochondria. What they are trying todo, it seems, is replace the defective mitochondria of the mother with the mitochondria from a healthy donor. Thus preventing the transmission of this disease.
The problem with mitochondrial myopathies is that it is often unclear whether the problem is nuclear or mitochondrian DNA. Mitochondrion use DNA from both sources, so having faulty mitochondrion doesn't necessarily indicate that using other mitochondrion will solve things.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Either you are insanely fast, you are a subscriber, you are a PERL script, or you are from the future.
Or he regularly browses through the BBC headlines, maybe via a live bookmark in Firfox. That's how most people found the story.
Oh come on. Have a sense of humor.
...but this was almost exactly the plotline of an episode of Sliders...I kid you not!
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
On top of the problems mentioned above, Britain continues to be plagued by leftist panic-mongers who dump truckloads of artificial fear and guilt on anyone or anything that looks too much like it might result in some progress!
But I guess you knew that.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
So, the fact that someone's parents chose to create a child, that by chance had a defect (not carried by the parents, but a transcoding flaw during the combination of the 2 components) should never have children of their own?
Trust me, if that's *truly* how you feel, then by all means, do NOT have children of your own, and leave the world a better place.
Otherwise allow science to give hope to couples who wish to have children, but do not wish to pass on the health problems they had to deal with during their lifetime.
I happen to be a parent, who would have dearly loved to have this as an option, to make 100% certain that nothing was passed on to our child.
I understand, that you may have been making an attempt at humor. In my opinion, you failed miserably.
If it wasn't an attempt at humor, then I feel sorry for you.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Sterilization is so inefficient. We should kill them all! We will all become super-beings!
Sealed your own death warrant, kid. Slashdot is a meeting place for genetic undesirables. Notice all those "never get laid" comments? We all lost out in the genetic lottery. We're smart, but that's about it.
When they came for the slashdotters, I said nothing.