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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. "
I am looking forward to the video. I hope it will be better than cam!
Gradually, men begin to disappear as old ones die and no new ones are born to replace them, until finally Earth is entirely populated by women.
Then some major event happens (like a giant meteor strike) that knocks technology back into the stone age. Without men and without labs, no babies can be created. The race is dying out.
And then, deep in some hidden location, a small cache of men is found in a research facility that was trying to find a way to keep the male half of our species alive. They are the last men on earth, and a planet full of women wants their stud services!
Commando teams of women try to raid the facility so that the men can be captured, mechanically "milked" for their semen, and it can be distributed. But the facility was created with superior defenses. The men inside are safe. Gradually the women realize that the men are in charge of their own bodies.
Each day ovulating women line up outside the facility, naked save for a pair of high heels, and bearing gifts of food and assorted lagers. The men choose the ones they find most attractive, then those must face off in an exotic dancing competition to determine who may enter and be serviced.
I think I've just written the script to a late-night cable movie.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Having had my aunt die due to her muscle dystrophy (heart is also a muscle, remember?) I'm for one glad that research is done in the subject.
I wonder how long time it'll take until we can get rid of the genetic defects which we otherwise risk pass on.
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
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."
Fear the turtle farming ninja!
Curiously, the DNA in the mitochondria use a slightly different genetic code than our nuclear DNA does; genes have moved from the mitochondria to the nucleus over time, but the process is not complete. It's believed that mitochondria come from an ancient endosymbiosis event.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
"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.
...but this was almost exactly the plotline of an episode of Sliders...I kid you not!
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
...even God's DRM is hackable.
And they didn't even need DVD Jon's help!
What hope do Apple/Microsoft/etc have?
Careful research by men suggests that the total lack of a brain would occur only if both the women were blondes. In other cases, the mental processes of the fully grown subject would be extremely myserious but nontheless contain elements of apparent intelligence. The ability of the subject to remember random events from long in the past would be particularly evident.