Human Sperm Produced In the Laboratory

duh P3rf3ss3r writes "The BBC is carrying a report from a team of researchers at Newcastle University who claim to have developed a the first 'artificial' human sperm from stem cells. The research, reported in the journal Stem Cells and Development, involved selecting meristematic germ cells from a human embryonic stem cell culture and inducing meiosis, thus producing a haploid gamete. The authors claim that the resulting sperm are fully formed, mature, human sperm cells but the announcement has been greeted with mixed reaction from colleagues who claim the procedure is ethically questionable and that the gametes produced are of inferior levels of maturation."

Comments

I SWEAR

[Phizzle]

I DIDNT DO IT!

Re:I SWEAR

[MyLongNickName]

I DIDNT DO IT!

This is Slashdot. That goes without saying.

Re:I SWEAR

[Em Emalb]

I'm still trying to figure out how they knew I call my bathroom "the Lab"

Re:I SWEAR

[sigxcpu]

You have a name tag on your bathrobe.

Re:I SWEAR

[Anonymous Coward]

What they did is destroy a living embryo, and make sperm from it. And some call this progress ???
Don't people remember that nature is the other way around, a male unites with a female, the sperm meets the egg and becomes an embryo, then a living being.

I'm all for science and progress, but let's not forget about nature. Adoption is a very natural approach to infertility,

The human race is under no threat of disappearing that could justify those research!

Re:I SWEAR

[cffrost]

[...] I bet it's really embarrassing if someone tries to kill you.

Elaine likes it.

So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the big deal? I generate human sperm at least once a day and I don't even need a laboratory.

Re:So what?

[tverbeek]

And for my next trick, I will produce human blood outside of a laboratory. Could I have a volunteer from the audience to assist me?

Re:So what?

[interkin3tic]

And you almost generated humor there. If you had a lab maybe you could have actually been funny.

The big deal though is, I would assume actually several things

1. It's interesting enough that we can generate them in vitro. How sperm are made is better known than some other cell types, but now even the parts we don't know can be more easily studied, since you can watch it in a microscope easier. Changing conditions to determine what sperm need to develop is also going to be easier in a dish than it would to change conditions in a mouse testicle (I would assume, I've never tried.) For example, some big pharmecutical company could start a high-throughput screen of drugs on the process, they could identify some chemicals which would block the process and maybe make a male birth control pill. Maybe. There are many other applications for the technology too I'd assume.

2. We're close to curing some types of male sterility. If, say, you had testicular cancer or other... uh... trauma to your testicles that prevented you from generating your own sperm, this is a step toward that. You could take some of your cells (like skin cells), make them pluripotent (like embryonic stem cells), generate sperm from them, and then undergo IVF.

At least, a millionaire could. If he were willing to sort out the ethics of it for himself. Would be kind of stupid if you ask me, but so are a lot of things people spend their money on.

Re:So what?

[LordKaT]

I have a lab and he *HATES* it when I try to generate sperm.

Re:So what?

[xch13fx]

i see baseball players and other heavy steroid users being interested in this.

Re:So what?

[HTH NE1]

And you almost generated humor there. If you had a lab maybe you could have actually been funny.

And maybe some blackjack and hookers.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a lab and he *HATES* it when I try to generate sperm.

There actually was a documentary about this very process a few years ago.

Re:So what?

[cashman73]

Or, 3. if they took stem cells from a lesbian, they could generate some sperm for her, thereby along her to impregnate her other female partner. Next, all they need to do is to generate an egg cell from a homosexual male stem cell. Then, once same-sex couples can successfully reproduce, the religious right is going to go apeshit and all hell is going to break loose! ;-)

Re:So what?

[interkin3tic]

I wasn't sure where you were going until the end there. That would be entertaining. How long before we'd see the first attempts at defining a person as the result of a straight man's sperm fertilizing a straight female's egg in a marriage. Probably called "Defense of humanity" act.

Re:So what?

[ElKry]

And, on a chilling (for me) twist, if they took stem cells from a woman, they could generate some sperm for her, thereby allowing her to impregnate herself .

Re:So what?

[Thiez]

You wouldn't want to do that though, since this would basically be incest++. If we ever get the tech to make impregnating yourself with yourself possible, it'll probably get banned because it'd lead to a higher chance of birth defects.

Re:So what?

[interkin3tic]

Wow. Incest++. That's a term that I had hoped would never be invented.

Re:So what?

[anjin-san 3]

What an immaculate idea!

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the big deal? I generate human sperm at least once a day and I don't even need a laboratory.

So, corporations can now manufacture babies in a factory to be used for slave labor, war etc. They still need artificial eggs. Oh, and wealthy women can buy sperm instead of marrying some loser.

Re:So what?

[geminidomino]

And here I'd hoped a game console would be the first to market with an "Autogenesis" trademark...

Re:So what?

[telomerewhythere]

From the Article:

We demonstarted clearly that germ cells dereived from XY hES cells are able to enter meiosis and complete this process. In contrast, germ cells derived from XX hES cells express spermatogonia specific markers, but are not able to complete meiotic process in vitro. There are several lines of evidence demonstrating that genes on Y chromosomes are essential for meiosis.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you use the sperm from the lesbian to impregnate the same lesbian, and then some alien hell being bursts through her chest, at least that's what some church guy told me!

Re:So what?

[Hurricane78]

And where would those women get the Y chromosome from?

Not from me, because I will not be the idiot that pays for child support, and did not even get any sex for it! (And if it is a women, and she knows that you are the father, she will take every last cent from you! ^^)

Re:So what?

[defireman]

The resultant offspring will be a clone of herself then? Legalized human cloning... mmm.

Re:So what?

[rachit]

thereby allowing her to impregnate herself .

Gives real meaning to the saying "go fuck yourself".

Re:So what?

[mdielmann]

I read a book where it was called an 'aeolian solo'. The creatures engaging in such were non-human (obviously!), but I'll leave it as a trivia game for you to find the book.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

If, as you say, they did produce sperm from a female, won't it only have chromosome pair XX? And if this is used to impregnate another female with chromosome pair XX, it will only produce females and no males.
I think there might also be a chance of losing genetic diversity here.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

this is probably forbidden by incest laws?

Re:So what?

[interkin3tic]

Sperm doesn't have pairs of chromesomes, it has only one. But you're right, if you make sperm from female stem cells it could only have an X chromesome, never a Y chromesome, so you'd only get female offspring.

The only inherent loss of genetic diversity would be the Y chromesome, which doesn't have much genetic information on it anyway. The wiki page on the Y chromesome points out that "the human Y chromosome itself contains only 78 working genes, compared to close to 1500 working genes on the X chromosome" and none of the 78 are "vital." For women anyway for obvious reasons.

As long as the female that the sperm are derived from isn't closely related to the female that produces the egg, it wouldn't seem like there would be diversity loss.

Re:So what?

[bitt3n]

I wasn't sure where you were going until the end there. That would be entertaining. How long before we'd see the first attempts at defining a person as the result of a straight man's sperm fertilizing a straight female's egg in a marriage. Probably called "Defense of humanity" act.

except gay people can have straight kids, so you'd actually want to somehow ask the sperm (nicely) whether he was gay. Then if he says yes, you'll need to freeze him until scientists develop a cure (for homosexuality or religion, take your pick)

Re:So what?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Why would you pay to manufacture slave babies when you could just let the poor do it for you? They've been doing a fine job, even against their own economic interests, for centuries now.

Re:So what?

[Mista2]

But there are some who cant. No imagine if there is someone who is a carrier of a male line genetic disease. Maybe they would still like the chance to have sperm created and selected without this defect. However I see the problem is what diseases would you correct for, what are the chances of other abnormalities with this process.
Still a very dangerous and questionable game to play with potential peoples lives.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

by generate I bet you mean secrete

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really bad idea. It would result in some pretty bad incest/inbreeding problems. You'd be much better off cloning her. She would at least have a healthy genome then.

Re:So what?

[AmberBlackCat]

Or impregnate her female friend and get impregnated by her female friend. It has been a dream of mine for a while now that females could reproduce with other females.

Re:So what?

[lordharsha]

Hmmm... would that be considered incest?

Re:So what?

[ignavus]

So you could take a stem cell from a man and generate an ovum, and take a stem cell from a woman and generate a sperm, and then put them together and conceive a child.

But would some of the eggs have a Y chromosome, and all of the sperm have X chromosomes? And would that work (i.e. where the fertilised egg was XY)?

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Next, all they need to do is to generate an egg cell from a homosexual male stem cell.

Would be quite interesting to see what someone with two Y-chromosomes would be like.
Would he be like Bruno or like Chuck Norris. :)

Re:So what?

[Tubal-Cain]

No. You would need to breed out every mismatched set of genes she has before the offspring would start bearing clones of themselves.

Re:So what?

[soundguy]

If, as you say, they did produce sperm from a female, won't it only have chromosome pair XX? And if this is used to impregnate another female with chromosome pair XX, it will only produce females and no males.
I think there might also be a chance of losing genetic diversity here.

Don't you mean GENDER diversity?

Re:So what?

[cashman73]

The Y chromosome wouldn't be needed. The lesbians would only be capable of producing more women, which only requires the X chromosome. Which is probably fine with them, since they most likely hate men anyways,...

Re:So what?

[MBGMorden]

Not a clone at all. Instead you'd get the most inbred offspring imaginable. You as a person already have a pretty diverse genetic makeup - your DNA is made up of pairs of chromosomes. When you reproduce those pairs split to form some sequence (which side of the pair gets split off is essentially random).

So for example you might have the following
AB
CD
EF
GH

If the sperm created from you picks up the following:

A
D
F
G

And the egg picks up:

A
D
E
H

Then the resulting person's genetic code would be:

AA
DD
FE
GH

That's different than the code of the original person. That property is pretty obvious when you think about it: 2 parents produce genetically different offspring every time they have different children right (aside from identical twins)?

The problem is that for any negative recessive traits they'll only manifest themselves if it joins back with itself. Such as the AA and DD pairs above. With a stranger that's rather rare - they'd need to be carrying the same recessive gene AND you'd both need to give that gene when you reproduce. With sibling pairings, or offspring to parent pairings though, you share 50% of the same genetic code, so the chances of you both having negative recessive genes goes up dramatically, which is why inbred children are at such a high risk of birth defects. Now, with a 50% match being that bad, you can imagine that a person breeding with themselves (so a 100% match between both "parents") would produce children at an even higher risk of birth defects.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The next question is whether you can insert a stock Y gene and remove an X to get a viable sperm.

Re:So what?

[sydbarrett74]

And, on a chilling (for me) twist, if they took stem cells from a woman, they could generate some sperm for her, thereby allowing her to impregnate herself.

Nature's already got parthenogenesis, which has more-or-less the same outcome.

Re:So what?

[Meumeu]

Or, 3. if they took stem cells from a lesbian, they could generate some sperm for her, thereby along her to impregnate her other female partner.

Actually no:

It is worth noting that researchers could generate IVD sperm only from male embryos; when they tried using stem cells from a female embryo, they were unable to get sperm to mature past the spermatogonial stage. That suggests that genes located on the Y chromosome, which female cells do not contain, may be essential for triggering the maturation of the primitive sperm cell.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lesbians rejoice! We can finally cure the world of males.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its been happening for quite some time now. Havent you seen the Amazon princess from the Justice League? How else do you suppose they have an all female island?

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Incest++. That's a term that I had hoped would never be invented.

Dude that's been around forever, that's incest...incremented!

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the big deal? I generate human sperm at least once a day and I don't even need a laboratory

What's the big deal? I generate human sperm at least once a day and I don't even need a lavatory.

There, fixed it for you.

Re:So what?

[damaki]

It's not that they can, it's that they do have straight kids. Gay people have statistically more straight kids than straight people. Gay couples try to raise their children *normal* so that they do not meet the same hardships as their parents, but even more than straight parents.

Re:So what?

[autoevolution]

Um, wouldn't this be more like cloning than incest?

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, dogs in general go crazy licking sperm. Whether it's their own or someone else's.

Re:So what?

[verbalcontract]

Ironically we've had ++Incest for a while, where you have the baby and then you screw yourself.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that certainly gives new meaning to the phrase 'go fuck yourself!'

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Note to Slashdot admins. Need new moderation tag: -1 Ewww.
Alternately" -1 TMI (Too Much Information).

Re:So what?

[interkin3tic]

So you could take a stem cell from a man and generate an ovum, and take a stem cell from a woman and generate a sperm, and then put them together and conceive a child.

As far as I know, we haven't made eggs from stem cells. Did a google search for "eggs from stem cells" but everything that came up was talking about the reverse (paying women to donate eggs to harvest ESC from) and didn't want to sort through those. It might be more difficult to make eggs from male stem cells, in fact we might find it's much more difficult to make eggs from any pluripotent stem cells, even if you do have 2 X chromosomes. And actually, I haven't been able to access the real article in stem cell and development, and no one seems to be sure if the sperm are from XY stem cells or not, or if they can functionally fertilize an egg or not. They may have gotten cells that look like sperm from male ESC that aren't actually fully functional.

So we're probably a few years away from a female father and a male mother scenario.

But would some of the eggs have a Y chromosome, and all of the sperm have X chromosomes? And would that work (i.e. where the fertilised egg was XY)?

Assuming they do figure out how to get opposite gametes, sperm from XX and eggs from XY, then yeah, that could happen. If you are doing fully reversed gametes, that might work out as normal.

What might become an issue is if, say, two gay men wanted to have a child that was basically their offspring. If we figure out how to make an egg from male cells, seems like half the eggs would have a Y chromesome. If you're fertilizing them with normal male sperm, half of them are also going to have a Y chromesome. Half the resulting offspring would have XY and be male, a quarter would have XX and be female, but there would be a quarter that had no X chromosome, and would be YY. They wouldn't survive, but I'm not sure how far they would develop. If they started to, and in an IVF setting a (female) surrogate were carrying normal embryos and one YY, would the YY implant but then later spontaneously abort, and would that event cause the other, viable embryos to also be lost?

Re:So what?

[shaitand]

if your a guy, having a baby IS screwing yourself

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

In Dog You Thrust?

Re:So what?

[shaitand]

A single generation wouldn't really be a big deal. Its done with pot plants all the time. Unlike most plants marijuana has gender differentiation and plants are generally either male or female (although stress can induce male flowers in females this is the exception rather than the rule).

Since the only part of the plant that is useful for psychological effects by simply drying and smoking is the unpollenated flowers of a female plant a trick of growers is to use chemicals to induce male flowers in a stable female plant and then use the pollen to pollenate that plant (or a clone of that plant which amounts to the same thing). This yields seeds that will grow into all female plants and a genetic pool that is more or less the same as that the original plant came from with only a slight leaning toward the specific phenotype of the parent.

Do it a few generations though and you'll have to rename the strain to Alabama.

Re:So what?

[shaitand]

In all fairness inbreeding increases the likelihood of recessive traits developing whether those traits are positive or negative.

Re:So what?

[shaitand]

Our understanding of gene function if FAR too primitive to accurately assess the importance of those genes.

Besides, it seems fairly obvious that the logic, common sense, and notbepsycho genes are among them.

Re:So what?

[interkin3tic]

Our understanding of gene function if FAR too primitive to accurately assess the importance of those genes.

Besides, it seems fairly obvious that the logic, common sense, and notbepsycho genes are among them.

I'm not sure if that first line was just a setup for the joke, but in seriousness, women do demonstrate that the genes are non-essential for non-males, and the aforementioned wiki page also points out that some mammals' Y chromesome has basically been whittled down the the SRY gene that causes male development. So "women are crazy" joke aside, every female on earth is walking proof that you don't need the genes on the Y chromesome.

Re:So what?

[cashman73]

Dude! How in the frak did that get modded "-1 Troll"?!?!

Re:So what?

[sglines]

Lends new meaning to Go F*&k yourself.

Well...

[mdm-adph]

There goes the male sex...? :P

Re:Well...

[rastilin]

There goes the male sex...? :P

My vast powers predicted this post from the very time I saw it on google's feed. I've also got a response. "I don't exist just for the sake of making children.".

Re:Well...

[DeadChobi]

Good luck getting anything built, assembled, or shipped without us.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Spend some time around some militant feminists. Yes, yes you do.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

And to them I reply "GET YOUR ASS BACK IN THE KITCHEN AND MAKE ME A SANDWICH"! Because militant feminists are the worst kind of person and yelling at them never makes me feel bad.

Re:Well...

[AvitarX]

As long as women don't find out about jar openers I think we're safe.

Re:Well...

[schon]

A man and a woman get into an elevator and press the button for the top floor. Halfway up, the elevator stops. The man picks up the emergency phone, and is told that they'll be stuck for at least an hour.

The woman looks at him slyly and says "want to make me feel like a woman?"

"Sure", the man says, immediately taking off his shirt.

"Iron this for me!"

Re:Well...

[noundi]

Only if you won't survive the following 20 years. You see next step is the artificial uterus, quickly followed by the artificial boob. I believe it was Joseph whom uttered the words "seven years of plenty and seven years of famine," although this is the other way around.

Re:Well...

[Dunbal]

There's also the whole moving furniture about the room and hanging paintings business, too. I think we're safe for a while, until they manage to train the apes properly.

Re:Well...

[mangu]

I think we're safe for a while, until they manage to train the apes properly.

What do you mean? I think we are pretty well trained right now!

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we're safe for a while,

Are you kidding me - whatever it takes to keep us out of relationships, hopefully they figure out how to move furniture too pretty soon.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

The male sex is usually gone 1 year after the marriage certificate is signed anyway. Ask any group of married couples with kids. Just check in her dresser drawer or closet and you find where it went to.

Re:Well...

[cs668]

This was predicted in a book I read in the 70's I think the title was "Alph" gotta love Science Fiction becoming reality.

Re:Well...

[The Archon V2.0]

You see next step is the artificial uterus, quickly followed by the artificial boob.

Uhmmmm. Since I presume we're speaking in a breastfeeding context, they already invented the artificial breast a long time ago.

If we're speaking in a non-breastfeeding context, fake boobs have still been around for quite a while.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

There goes everyone. How long do you think it'll take until the first artificial human ovum...?

Re:Well...

[hobo sapiens]

well, that and driving around strange cities. And making rational decisions. Oh, and blowing stuff up! Women will never do *that* very well.

Re:Well...

[noundi]

Of course I'm aware of implants, however fake boobs != artificial boobs. When you hear of scientists growing a boob from stem cells, call me.

I can't believe it's not butter!

[Anonymous Coward]

For real, doesn't the fact that it was made in a lab mean it's NOT human?

Re:I can't believe it's not butter!

[alexborges]

If it has the DNA, its human.

Thats the ONLY THING that ENCODES humanity....

Food for thought, thats all Im saying.

Re:I can't believe it's not butter!

[julesh]

doesn't the fact that it was made in a lab mean it's NOT human?

No. Not unless you want to start claiming that all the people born because of IVF aren't human, which strikes me as a rather bizarre proposition.

Re:I can't believe it's not butter!

[blueg3]

It actually turns out that's not true -- if you had nothing but the DNA sequence, you could not (even in theory) construct a human from it. For one, the mitochondria organelles have their own genetics independent of our own. The organelles are inherited directly from the mother's cells. For another, how DNA is used and rendered into proteins, etc. is altered by chemicals that are carried along with the cell. If those are stripped away, information is lost.

Re:I can't believe it's not butter!

[gestalt_n_pepper]

To what degree of variation? How many pairs have to change before the genetic program is *not* human? Where would Neanderthals fit in? Or chimps? Or something in-between like my cousin Harry?

.
Inquiring minds want to know!

Re:I can't believe it's not butter!

[alexborges]

Accepted: my proposal is incomplete. However, I wonder if the robo-spermy guys have mitocondrias.

If they do then... well... same thing applies doesnt it? If you can replicate the base thingie and the whole process and turn up with a human, then the thing is human.

Re:I can't believe it's not butter!

[martyros]

Exactly... it's like saying you could reproduce a TomTom with just the source code. Well, the source code was interpreted with compilers, and it has to run on specific hardware.

However, the point still stands, that if I take undifferentiated stem cells, add some new DNA, and convince it to become a sperm cell, then use it to fertilize an egg (make in an ovary or in a lab), and the resulting zygote is allowed to mature (in a real uterus or a lab simulation), you'd have a hard time arguing that the resulting organism is not a human being, and thus not endowed with certain inalienable rights.

Re:I can't believe it's not butter!

[Thiez]

> If it has the DNA, its human.

Whose DNA? My dogs DNA is different from mine, yet so is yours. Yet we are (presumably, on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog!) the same species, while my dog is not. Unless you have some DNA sample that we can all agree about is THE standard of human DNA, and every DNA that deviates X% or more (for some value of X that we can all agree about) is no longer considered human, I think the "If it looks like a human, swims like a human and quacks like a human, then it probably is a human." test is probably the best way to determine who is a part of our species and who is not.

Re:I can't believe it's not butter!

[The Archon V2.0]

If it has the DNA, its human.

That's what I said to the judge, but he still wouldn't let me marry my sheep.

Re:I can't believe it's not butter!

[mdielmann]

Sperm doesn't have mitochondria - that's why you inherit it from your mother.
Go back to grade 9 science.

Re:I can't believe it's not butter!

[Eternauta3k]

Sperm is packed with mitochondria near the tail, they just don't pass on to the... thing that turns into a baby.

Re:I can't believe it's not butter!

[Mista2]

Actually I prefer the term "synthetic person" myself 8)

Re:I can't believe it's not butter!

[alexborges]

Go back to grade 9 science.

Are you kidding?

School is DANGEROUS this days.

Seriously, thanks for teaching: well received.

Re:I can't believe it's not butter!

[Anonymous Coward]

sauce please?

Re:I can't believe it's not butter!

[badkarmadayaccount]

...a TomTom with just the Verilog source code...

FTFY.

Wow science is amazing

[al0ha]

Once we can produce eggs in the lab, we are one step closer to a "Matrix" type reality for the future of humanity.

Re:Wow science is amazing

[Manfre]

One step closer to not having hormonally imbalanced pregnant women...

My wife and I really wish the human reproductive cycle involved external incubation. I'd create a device to post to twitter whenever the baby kicks.
 

Re:Wow science is amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

Here here, my wife endured 9 months of 'all day' sickness. Morning sickness my fucking arse.

We now hate all people with 'fluffy' pregnancies, that have the ability to go out and interact with the world and go on fun prenatal swimming classes and have that pregnant 'glow' Cunts, the lot of them.

And now we have a baby with reflux that won't eat properly or sleep properly. Life's great!

Re:Wow science is amazing

[migla]

One step closer to not having hormonally imbalanced pregnant women...

Eh... One step closer to not having men, more like.

(I only read the headline. I apologize if this is an erroneous comment)

Re:Wow science is amazing

[fastest fascist]

If men could reproduce on their own, do you think women would just vanish?

Re:Wow science is amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

And now we have a baby with reflux that won't eat properly or sleep properly. Life's great!

      You could always sell it to the taliban for $12k so they can bundle it with some explosives...

Re:Wow science is amazing

[migla]

Nope. But the shoe is on the other foot, now, isn't it...

Re:Wow science is amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. Who would pay for child support then?

Re:Wow science is amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting, it is apparently true that tasteless jokes about kids/babies *do* become less funny when they are about your own lol.

Re:Wow science is amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

We're doomed!

Re:Wow science is amazing

[fataugie]

No, they wouldn't vanish.... but there'd be no reason for men to interact with them anymore.

Re:Wow science is amazing

[HTH NE1]

If men could reproduce on their own, do you think women would just vanish?

No, but if it were the other way around, men would vanish (no Y chromosomes). (Mary had mosaicism from absorbing her fraternal twin in the womb allowing for progenation of a male offspring.)

"Progenation. Reproduction by a single organism. It means one parent is biological mother and father. You take a sample of diploid cells, split them into haploids then recombine them in a different arrangement and grow."

Re:Wow science is amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

One step closer to not having hormonally imbalanced pregnant women...

My wife and I really wish the human reproductive cycle involved external incubation. I'd create a device to post to twitter whenever the baby kicks.

No you don't need either artifical sperm or artifical ova for what you what. Instead you just need a real life version of one of these. Just make sure not you lose the one with your offspring inside when someone attempts a coup!

Re:Wow science is amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

But who would mow the lawn, take out the trash, kill spiders, lift any object more than 30 lbs, reach the top shelf...

Re:Wow science is amazing

[Loconut1389]

Doctor Who eh?

Re:Wow science is amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck no. Why? Because as brazen as it sounds, we want pussy. If you believe the feminists though, the only thing men are good for is sperm.

Re:Wow science is amazing

[Gravedigger3]

Nah, that sounds like far too much of a sausage fest.

Re:Wow science is amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

mmm... glow cunt...

Re:Wow science is amazing

[Hurricane78]

Well, guess how the "pill" works: By partially simulating the same hormonal imbalance of a pregnant women!

So she is constantly "pregnant" somehow, as long as she takes them.

If you think about, how animals, when pregnant, are way more defensive and aggressive,
and when the "pill" started to be used, this could somehow explain the feminist movement, which started at the same time. ^^

I wonder what would happen, if we would get our women off the "pill" and used condoms for a year.
Maybe it would be worth the lack of feel. ^^

Re:Wow science is amazing

[Anonymous Coward]

The George Clooney sex bots that the straight militant feminists have been developing for years in their secret underwater bases.

Re:Wow science is amazing

[mjwx]

One step closer to not having hormonally imbalanced pregnant women...

My wife and I really wish the human reproductive cycle involved external incubation.

You're sorry you didn't marry a reptile?

Re:Wow science is amazing

[Mindcontrolled]

You're sorry you didn't marry a reptile?

He clearly is an agent of The Lizard People, mating with an unsuspecting human female. Burn him, before it is too late.

Re:Wow science is amazing

[Hurricane78]

Oh, and to clarify, I must mention, that I love women, and what I want, is for them to be happy too.

So see this as a little humor, and be clear that in reality, it 1. is their decision anyway, and 2. a will always decide what is good for both men and women, when ji get to decide.

Now how will Slashdotters get laid?

[Anonymous Coward]

If sperm could easily be reproduced, I'm SURE the average Slashdotter's sex life will plummet.

Re:Now how will Slashdotters get laid?

[alexborges]

0*1gazillion is still zero.... sigh.

Re:Now how will Slashdotters get laid?

[mcgrew]

no problem...

Re:Now how will Slashdotters get laid?

[guruevi]

Plummet? So now people will start promising Slashdotters they will have sex with them and never deliver? THE AGONY!

Re:Now how will Slashdotters get laid?

[SoulRider]

Obvoiusly you have never seen bukkake, sperm is already pretty easily produced.

Re:Now how will Slashdotters get laid?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought sexLife was declared as a variable of type unsigned, not a type int.

Where's the story?

[bugg]

Where's the BBC story that's mentioned? I think the editors left a link out.

Re:Where's the story?

[Vectronic]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8138963.stm

This also from science today:

[PingSpike]

They're also working to develop a process that allows the transformation of gold into lead.

Re:This also from science today:

[mtempsch]

They're also working to develop a process that allows the transformation of gold into lead.

They're late - the economists already have that process perfected.

Re:This also from science today:

[fastest fascist]

Oh I can already do that. Just send me a few bars of gold, I'll transform them into lead and send them back to you. Postage is on you.

Re:This also from science today:

[vertinox]

They're also working to develop a process that allows the transformation of gold into lead.

Actually, not to surprise bubble... But It has been done via nuclear transmutation in labs since the 1970s.

Before you get your science kits together to make it rich there are three caveats.

One... It requires a nuclear reactor.
Two... It products only a few atoms of gold far less than the cost of energy to make.
Three... The Gold is radioactive.

But if you got a nuclear reactor and plenty of urianium and mercury to burn, go right ahead.

Re:This also from science today:

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, not to surprise bubble...

Oh, it's quite alright, I think the surprise is on you, he said gold into lead, not lead into gold. ;)

so what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I will be producing some in a bedroom later w/o all the expensive equipment.

Mandatory...

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one, welcome our female overlords. I hope they find me useful and will not use me for food.

Re:Mandatory...

[Nadaka]

speak for yourself, I don't mind if I she swallows.

Re:Mandatory...

[Culture20]

I for one, welcome our female overlords.

I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their sugar caves. In fact, forget the rounding up others, I'll toil just fine. And forget the blackjack.

Re:Mandatory...

[Thiez]

> to toil in their sugar caves

Is that what they call it these days...

Re:Mandatory...

[that IT girl]

Good, good. -pats you on the head- For your compliance, your death shall be quick and painless. ;)

Misread

[StDoodle]

Is it any surprise that, with such an article, I had to do a double-take to properly read "...inferior levels of maturation."

That's not news

[Anonymous Coward]

Human sperm has been produced in laboratories ever since they got Internet connection and you could download porn to your lab PC.

Oh, they mean artificial sperm. Nevermind then

Why the need?

[XPeter]

There's a group of wonderful gents right here that would be delighted to give their precious sperm.

Damn!

[BCW2]

Add this to the turkey baster and women will have even less use for us men!

Re:Damn!

[Hatta]

As long as they don't invent a device that opens jars, we're safe. What? NNNOOOoooo!!!

Re:Damn!

[Duradin]

Until women find a better way to quickly get real estate and lifetime income for the small cost of a divorce lawyer they'll still want men around.

Hmm, I wonder what will happen when a woman divorces a woman. How would the judge figure out which one to give the house, car, and alimony to?

Re:Damn!

[dkleinsc]

My first thought on this was that this would be Valerie Solanas' dream come true.

Re:Damn!

[fataugie]

How would the judge figure out which one to give the house, car, and alimony to?

The one who looks closest to Rosie O'Donnell

Re:Damn!

[Gravedigger3]

He'll take a house, car, and alimony from a third party (male) because god forbid a woman comes out of a divorce proceeding without being set for life.

Re:Damn!

[mjwx]

Add this to the turkey baster and women will have even less use for us men!

Is anyone working on a device to open jars?

/Grabs shotgun.

Re:Damn!

[BCW2]

Definition:
divorce n - the screwing you get for the screwing you got.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

It's about time...

[Tenek]

Finally, this will address the critical shortage of sperm we face today.

Re:It's about time...

[RockWolf]

Finally, this will address the critical shortage of sperm we face today.

Alright, slashdotters! Now is your big chance - go get 'em.

...

Yes, Timmy, outside into the big blue room where there is no undo button, the gamma is too high and there's no wall hacking. Yes, there, the great unknown where your mother gets your Dew and Cheetos, and computer parts arrive in trucks that you've glimpsed from your front door.

... Fine, go back to your one-handed surfing. *sighs* If you want something done right, do it yourself... The things I do for you lot.

Stock prices of sperm donors

[Anonymous Coward]

aka men has suddenly collapsed

This story is just too hard to swallow!

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't resist.

Er....

[Mikkeles]

What's unethical about this?

Re:Er....

[kalirion]

The use of that sperm for procreation would be unethical (human cloning).

Re:Er....

[Mikkeles]

No, it wouldn't.

Re:Er....

[Defakto]

What's unethical about this?

The use would be the unethical portion and science because there is no guarantee that what results from the sperm-egg coupling using one of this would be a viable, working person. Religious and moral beliefs aside I think this is a great thing. It may not now help us understand how our bodies work but it may lead to it in the future. I'm a firm believer that cloning has a huge potential in the long term for helping out humanity as a race.

Re:Er....

[Speare]

"What's unethical about this?"

A fair question, but the answer is obvious. The scientists think the product is perfect, but what if it's not? At this stage of our understanding in the process, you can't ethically ask some woman to bear a potentially deformed or unviable fetus. We have no idea how it would go. Even if it were to survive the gestation, we may only discover after a year or two that the child has some debilitating problem: now we've created a human being from scratch who must die prematurely, and the parents and caregivers would also be heavily affected in the negative.

Re:Er....

[julesh]

What's unethical about this?

Not saying I believe any of these to be valid, but these are the concerns people are likely to have:

1. "Playing god."

There is a major taboo with messing with our reproductive systems, and every time any major advance in reproductive science occurs, there are religious arguments against it. Compare it with IVF and birth control, both of which attracted a lot of attention from a number of religions and are considered unethical by many.

2. The technique enables a major change in the reproduction of our species. There does not appear to be any reason why the stem cells would have to come from male donor; this tecnique could result in a child with two female biological parents. Potentially even only one female biological parent. I can understand why this would worry a lot of people.

3. A child resulting from the use of this technique is quite likely to have a biological parent who never actually lived. This is a rather peculiar potential outcome, and may well worry some people.

I don't personally see any of these as a serious problem, as long as the technique is used sparingly. But you can bet there are a lot of people who find some or all of these ideas repugnant.

Re:Er....

[blueg3]

It's not cloning, because it's a haploid cell. Cloning requires that an embryo be formed from a diploid.

In other words, in a clone, the clone is a genetic duplicate of the parent. In this procedure, a cell is induced into meiosis, which creates two half-sets of DNA. This is combined with a half-set of DNA in an egg, just like in non-lab sexual reproduction. With the genetic juggling that goes on during meiosis, it wouldn't even be cloning if the sperm and egg were from the same individual. (I guess that would be F1 self-hybridization, which would frankly be pretty creepy, but not as much as cloning.)

Re:Er....

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not cloning if you're producing sperm from a stem cell. You would still have to mate the sperm with an egg, and even if you were able to produce an egg from that same line of stem cells (nothing in the article suggests this), the resulting offspring would not be identical to the parent. So no, not cloning.

Re:Er....

[CannonballHead]

4. You may end up with a "human" that is somehow not "human" due to strange things going on with the sperm that wasn't "naturally" produced and the egg from wherever. So now you have, in your mind, "produced" or "manufactured" an "inferior" human. Is "it" worth keeping?

If no, and killing "it" is allowed, then we've just legalized killing human beings because someone else deemed them not worth keeping around.

That is a pretty dangerous path to go down without some serious thought.

People get majorly upset with science allowing us to blow up the entire world and want us not to pursue weapons that would allow that, or at least keep them at bay. Is this so very different, from that non-religious "survival of society" standpoint?

Re:Er....

[CannonballHead]

Not to mention that we've decided it's worth experimenting, essentially, on human babies. Not even on human embryos or human fetuses or whatever, now we are talking about human kids. Outside the womb. This really does seem like a downhill slope. I'm against abortion in the first place, but to "grow" a human to see how it turns out?

There are organizations with vehement supporters for "ethical treating of animals" and "no animal testing" and yet we are willing to start testing, uh, human farming... or something.

Maybe I should start a "Humane Treatment for Humans" organization. And actually define what a "human" is, since nobody wants to define that. Until it comes down to when someone ELSE wants to define it in a way that personally affects you.

Re:Er....

[Altus]

Of course regular parents take this chance every time the conceive a child.

I'm not sure I see the ethical dilemma in using this technology to allow a couple with fertility problems to reproduce. Sure, in this case you don't know what the odds are, and its possible something will go wrong that couldn't go wrong normally. But everyone who has a child takes the chance that the child might be deformed or sick or die shortly after birth. Its part of the human condition.

Re:Er....

[camperdave]

Well, at the moment, they're creating this "sperm" by killing existing viable embryos.

Re:Er....

[thisnamestoolong]

Well, first of all, that would absolutely not be human cloning.

Second of all, I am confused by your immediate assumption that human cloning is immoral. Why? A cloned human is no different than an identical twin -- I fail to see what would be so monstrously offensive to our sensibilities about that. It is not like in the movies when a man steps into a machine and a perfect copy of him steps out the other end; the cloned person will still be a unique (albeit very similar) human being. Human clones would still have to be incubated and born just as any other human.

It seems to me that the only reason anybody has a problem with it is that they think it will make Jeebus angry and that it makes them feel icky, but there really is no logical reason for it to be such an offensive proposition. Surely if it were taking place on a mass scale we would see problems -- disease and parasites would be able to run more freely through a population where all of the individuals shared a nearly identical genetic makeup, but I can't see why human cloning would ever need to grow beyond a very small niche market, at which point there would be virtually no dangers as far as reduced disease resistance.

Re:Er....

[Anonymous Coward]

The scientists think the product is perfect, but what if it's not? At this stage of our understanding in the process, you can't ethically ask some woman to bear a potentially deformed or unviable fetus. We have no idea how it would go.

Why could this same argument not have been used against the first human experiments with in vitro fertilization? (Which the media liked to call "test tube babies" at the time.)

Re:Er....

[Anonymous Coward]

"[...] deformed or sick or die shortly after birth."

It would be unethical to start experiments where those outcomes might (and we wouldn't know before we tried, would we?) be more likely than with regular jizzum.

Re:Er....

[YrWrstNtmr]

The use of that sperm for procreation would be unethical (human cloning).

No, it wouldn't.

That is your opinion, not a fact. As you can see, someone else has a different opinion. Again, that is not a 'fact'.

Re:Er....

[tixxit]

And why could this not be tested on animals first? Also, I'd rather live a few years then no years at all.

Re:Er....

[tixxit]

This dilemma is far from new. There are lots of people who carry a significant risk that their child will have a deformity (due to genetics) and have to make this decision. Do you feel it is unethical for them to try? At what percent chance of an abnormality do you consider procreation to be unethical? On that note, what abnormalities do you feel are so terrible that it is better to not live at all, then live with the abnormality?

Re:Er....

[khellendros1984]

Human cloning? No more than you could call natural reproduction "human cloning". The process is supposed to create gametes through meiosis, the same process that produces the little swimmers between any guy's legs. It's more of a new variety of infertility treatment than anything else...although I'm still a little confused why there's so much work that goes into making sure that people with difficulty procreating can do it anyhow...

Re:Er....

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that we've decided it's worth experimenting, essentially, on human babies. Not even on human embryos or human fetuses or whatever, now we are talking about human kids. Outside the womb.

You mean, like test-tube babies did over 30 years ago?
Posting AC because I already modded in this article.

Re:Er....

[Thiez]

Actually, cloning has a definition, and it does not match this sperm thing EVEN if a female were to make her own sperm and impregnate herself.

Unless you accept that we can redefine every word of the english language at will without informing the rest of the world (which does make this whole discussion rather pointless, you could simply define every second word in my post as 'banana' and claim I'm not making any sense), Mikkeles is correct in saying that kalirion is incorrect in concluding that this is unethical because it is cloning; even if we accept the premise 'cloning is unethical', this procedure is NOT cloning (by definition) and therefore his argument does not make sense.

Re:Er....

[Thiez]

I think this one is quite farfetched since the resulting babies would be impossible to distinguish from 'normal' babies, assuming the technique used does not introduce any abnormalities in the DNA that do not occur naturally. The babies would pass the 'duck test' (if it look like a duck...) and be accepted as normal humans.

I for one wouldn't think of myself as 'more human' than someone created by this tech just because the meiosis that created the sperm that produced me took place between my father's legs as opposed to in a lab (indeed, the latter sounds much less disgusting).

Re:Er....

[Tubal-Cain]

And why could this not be tested on animals first?

Experimenting on the genome is worlds different than testing pharmaceuticals and consumer products on animals.

Re:Er....

[tixxit]

How so? Let me rephrase my question. Why can we not artificially create a pig's sperm, inseminate a female pig with it and see what happens?

Re:Er....

[Tubal-Cain]

We can, but perfecting the process with pigs will not fully prepare us for experimentation with humans. Eventually, we would have "to "grow" a human to see how it turns out", as CannonballHead noted.

Re:Er....

[tixxit]

Yep, but at that point we would have a pretty good idea if the process was safe or not. At some point we also tried in vitro fertilization on a human for the first time as well. There will always be a risk, but sometimes it is worth it. Perhaps not to a couple who can have children on their own, but it means the world to those who can't.

Re:Er....

[defireman]

If no, and killing "it" is allowed, then we've just legalized killing human beings because someone else deemed them not worth keeping around.

Killing human beings has already been legalized. It is called war.

i completely read that as...

[pinkj]

"...that the gametes produced are of inferior levels of masturbation."

Re:i completely read that as...

[Anonymous Coward]

I did also.

Same as always

[Anonymous Coward]

Infrequently.

Re:Sperm Shortage?

[f8l_0e]

Consider a man a wife. The husband is infertile for reasons other than motility. They could now have a child with sperm produced from his stem cells.

RTFM

[Anonymous Coward]

The sperm meet the 4 basic descriptions for sperm: have 23 chromosomes, have head and tail, have egg-activating proteins, and swim. They are not exact copies of sperm, and, more importantly, only sperm made from male cells actually matured; those from female cells didn't.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1909164,00.html
Post AC because I'm in a grouchy mood and commenting on something I usually don't comment on.

Re:RTFM

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks AC. I was hoping to find a running article.

Re:RTFM

[defireman]

It is worth noting that researchers could generate IVD sperm only from male embryos; when they tried using stem cells from a female embryo, they were unable to get sperm to mature past the spermatogonial stage. That suggests that genes located on the Y chromosome, which female cells do not contain, may be essential for triggering the maturation of the primitive sperm cell.

That's not surprising, seeing that a female never produces sperm in the first place.

Thats Just Great...

[DarthVain]

Now I am even more redundant...

Re:Thats Just Great...

[Kesch]

Now I am even more redundant...

(Please mod +5 redundant)

You're a Catholic the moment Lab came, because...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Every sperm is sacred,
Every sperm is great,
If a sperm is wasted,
God gets quite irate."

Re:Sperm Shortage?

[8127972]

Here's one reason. According to this article, 85% of sperm is damaged which leads to all sorts of "bad" things. So IMHO, something like this can perhaps help to fix damaged sperm or better understand why it is damaged.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

And the offspring's first words...

[Anonymous Coward]

brrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiinnsssss!

What's the problem?

[Anonymusing]

"the procedure is ethically questionable and that the gametes produced are of inferior levels of maturation"

So... they're suitable for producing politicians, lawyers, and bad Slashdot comments?

Re:What's the problem?

[spartacus_prime]

I'm a bad Slashdot comment, you insensitive clod!

Re:Sperm Shortage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting them from a lesbian's spouse rather than needing a man to donate the sperm :D

God hasn't anyone ever read Ninja High School? There was like a 2+ issue story in there about the Tetra-men or something and the Venusians (buncha technologically advanced lesbian chicks who'd just made a giant sperm bank and killed all the men millenia before) going to steal them to improve their collective sperm pool.

Ohh the sperm cells connected to the egg-cell...

[cellurl]

Check that off the list of what nature can do and now man can do.
But lets forget making spare parts, lets do gene splicing.
I want a new blanket-jackson.

NOT being used for reproduction.

[JO_DIE_THE_STAR_F***]

From the article The IVD sperm will not and cannot be used for fertility treatment. As well as being prohibited by UK law, the research team say fertilization of human eggs and implantation of embryos would hold no scientific merit for them as they want to study the process as a model for research.

Talking about using this sperm for reproduction is a little Premature.

I am soooo funny.

damaged sperm

[bugi]

I must be more careful to make sure all of my sperm is fresh. Perhaps there's some way I could extract the old sperm for disposal. Hmm, this will require some thinking.

Re:damaged sperm

[Kesch]

Mentioning "fresh sperm" just gave me the idea to tattoo "100% Local, 100% Organic" on my balls. Yuppy chicks will go crazy for it. After all, everyone knows that getting your sperm locally and organically is a lot healthier than the mass-produced crap being pumped out of laboratories.

Re:damaged sperm

[bugi]

Ouch!

Ok, let me be the first to say this...

[RelliK]

Every sperm is sacred.

This bodes ill...

[billius]

This bodes ill for us men.... :p

I swear the last line said...

[Anonymous Coward]

"...of inferior levels of masturbation."

finally

[circletimessquare]

the human female can get rid of the strutting, violent, undependable worthless parasite known as the human male and replace him with a dildo and some stem cells

oh wait, shit, i'm a male

feminist science made me extinct!

The Children

[supe]

These sperm will produce will never leave your basement or get off your lawn!

Very Low Profile Journal

[Anonymous Coward]

If the researchers had sufficient evidence to back their claim, it would be published in Nature.

simpsons didn't do this!!!

[anonymousNR]

Yeah now we beat simpsons after all these years.

Now here's an interesting future

[tinkertim]

A future break-up email? Or perhaps, mind mail?

"We are all engineered beings .. I'm sorry that your makeup shows that you have a high risk for heart attacks, .. so you are not for me. The lab made the miistake, its not your fault and don't blame god especially Pfizer or you'll vanish like the rest. But, my kids must be adequate for space careers, so I simply can not date you now, in grade 3. When I cease fertility, we can reconsider!"

Re:Sperm Shortage?

[powerlord]

What is the point of making sperm from stem cells?

Is there a sperm shortage I wasn't aware of?

Will this allow better quality control?

I know a couple who'd love to conceive a child but he was diagnosed as impotent.

If this process can be perfected, and if they can harvest Adult Stem Cells from him, then this would allow them to conceive a child together.

Something that I know would make them both very happy.

Blood==Stem Cells==Babies?????

[MarkvW]

If a woman gets your blood, then she can bear your children? Wow! This will be a great argument for deadbeat dads! Now they can truthfully say "I never had sexual relations with that woman."

Black markets for the blood of rich men . . .
Personal IP rights in your personal blood composition . . .

Wow, the world got more interesting on 7/08/2009!!!!

Re:Blood==Stem Cells==Babies?????

[Steve001]

MarkvW wrote:

If a woman gets your blood, then she can bear your children? Wow! This will be a great argument for deadbeat dads! Now they can truthfully say "I never had sexual relations with that woman."

Black markets for the blood of rich men . . .
Personal IP rights in your personal blood composition . . .

Wow, the world got more interesting on 7/08/2009!!!!

This could be a serious legal problem for men in the future. I'm not a lawyer, but based on what I've read the general guide is that if male reproductive material is used to produce a child, the biological father is liable for child support no matter what the specific circumstances are.

In the scenario mentioned by MarkvWI in his first quoted paragraph above, I don't think it is out of the realm of possibility that the man the blood was taken from could be held liable for child support.

Re:Blood==Stem Cells==Babies?????

[RazorSharp]

That's one of the reasons human cloning is illegal ;) It would be worse than that, however. Think about professional sports and all the potential corruption there. The records would become as meaningless as the MLB's over the last twenty years.

Personally, I think this research is good because it will probably be used to clone organs rather than entire individuals. I can't wait until I don't have to feel guilty for smoking :D

Re:Blood==Stem Cells==Babies?????

[compro01]

I'm not a lawyer, but based on what I've read the general guide is that if male reproductive material is used to produce a child, the biological father is liable for child support no matter what the specific circumstances are.

I believe it was ruled in Ferguson v. McKiernan that a sperm donor is not required to pay child support.

Re:Blood==Stem Cells==Babies?????

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, the world got more interesting on 7/08/2009!!!!

Fucking American.
It's not August yet.
Lrn2Calendar, plz.

Re:Blood==Stem Cells==Babies?????

[Anonymous Coward]

Genetic rape?

Re:Blood==Stem Cells==Babies?????

[MetaPhyzx]

That's an anonymous sperm donor and regarding a clinical procedure..

If you "donate" your sperm the old fashioned way, good luck with that defense. There have been (at least in one case) men who have been sexually assaulted, and required to provide for the offspring of the unwanted union.

Re:Blood==Stem Cells==Babies?????

[slashqwerty]

I do recall a couple who signed a contract in which the man agreed to donate sperm the natural way. She got pregnant, then sued him for child support and won.

Re:Blood==Stem Cells==Babies?????

[bobdevine]

Wow, the world got more interesting on 7/08/2009!!!!

For full effect, you needed to read the article at 34 minutes past noon. That would be at 12:34:56 07/08/09

Re:Blood==Stem Cells==Babies?????

[BountyX]

clinics would be required to have consent before this procedure takes place. it would be heavily regulated i image.

Re:Blood==Stem Cells==Babies?????

[corbettw]

Another reason they call it "the screwing you get for the screwing you got".

Re:Blood==Stem Cells==Babies?????

[LSanchez]

This could be a serious legal problem for men in the future. I'm not a lawyer, but based on what I've read the general guide is that if male reproductive material is used to produce a child, the biological father is liable for child support no matter what the specific circumstances are.

In the scenario mentioned by MarkvWI in his first quoted paragraph above, I don't think it is out of the realm of possibility that the man the blood was taken from could be held liable for child support.

Yes, because women are just bitches who want to suck money from the men.
#end irony

Re:Blood==Stem Cells==Babies?????

[mjwx]

wow, the world got more interesting on 7/08/2009!!!!

Thats still 29 days away?

Re:Blood==Stem Cells==Babies?????

[Kesch]

Anonymous sperm donation is pretty much the only way to get out of child support. In every other case the court has ruled "in favor of the child" which means the man has to pay child support even if he was raped. In contrast to much of society, reproductive rights are an area where the women have the men by the balls.

Re:Blood==Stem Cells==Babies?????

[Steve001]

Kesch wrote:

Anonymous sperm donation is pretty much the only way to get out of child support. In every other case the court has ruled "in favor of the child" which means the man has to pay child support even if he was raped. In contrast to much of society, reproductive rights are an area where the women have the men by the balls.

I think the only way an anonymous sperm donor can be safe from being required to pay child support is if it is truly anonymous, meaning there is completely impossible identify the donor. If a single record exists that can be used to identify the donor, then I would not be surprised if that could be used to require child support payments.

Also, there have been cases where it is later proven that a man is not the child's father but he is required to pay child support. If he fails to raise an objection in a timely manner, he can be forced to pay child support for a child that is not his.

Re:Blood==Stem Cells==Babies?????

[SaoirseC]

I don't think stem cells are found in blood- just umbilical cord blood and bone marrow. It would be rather difficult, I think, to extract bone marrow from a person without their knowledge.

Fucking Lame

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, we just want to see what diseases we can thwart with stem cell research...lol...Riiiight buddy. Its obvious that the natural course of scientific examination of stem cells is to eventually make fake sperm!

And those of us who dont want tax dollars to fund this kind of shit...well I guess we just have to deal. Im sure glad I belong to the 'common goal' of misdirected ethics.

The GF:s reply to this...

[migla]

"Cool! We don't need you guys anymore."

Re:The GF:s reply to this...

[the eric conspiracy]

They won't have anything to complain about without us.

One implication

[Arthur B.]

Interestingly, this opens the door to biological children from homosexuals couple. Sure it's been foreseen for a long time, still big big can of worm.

Re:One implication

[thisnamestoolong]

I for one would consider this to be an incredibly positive development -- two people that love each other can now have a child that is the sum of themselves, rather than having to either go to the local sperm bank and incorporate the genetic information from a stranger. I know that religious folks will be all up in arms, and they have a right to feel what they want about it, but in the end, they can go screw. They have no right to deny others the rights that they freely enjoy because it makes them feel 'icky'.

Re:One implication

[mcgrew]

How? You need male stem cells to produce the artificial sperm, and a womb. But the door has been open for ages; lots of gays have fathered children. Some of them are in Congress bashing gays...

Re:One implication

[D-Cypell]

1. Genetically engineer sperm from gay partner #1
2. Genetically engineer sperm from gay partner #2
3. ???
4. Profit

Re:One implication

[Anonymous Coward]

still big big can of worm.

No, "worm" no longer needed.

Re:One implication

[girlintraining]

Everything you know about creating life is wrong...

1. You need two parents.
      False: cloning, X0 conception (Also called Turner syndrome).

2. The parents must be of the opposite sex.
      False: Stem cell research can now create both eggs and sperm using DNA from another. DNA from a male can be inserted into an egg, and DNA from a female can be inserted into a sperm, although this has only been accomplished in a laboratory so far, and did not lead to viability.

3. You need a parent at all.
      Partly true: Present technology cannot take a child from conception to birth without involvement of a female at some point during the maturation cycle. However, womb transplantation and IVF means that the question of which female is now open-ended.

Re:One implication

[thesandtiger]

How is it any more a "big can of worm" than infertile hetero couples having children? Are you suggesting that there is some kind of ethical or moral problem with homosexuals having children with this tech that would not apply to heterosexual couples?

Re:One implication

[Mesa MIke]

And if we can learn to pick out individual chromosomes, then a child can have up to 52 parents!
But marriage between more than 52 participants will still be immoral and unnatural...

Re:One implication

[StormReaver]

Interestingly, this opens the door to biological children from homosexuals couple.

This kind of development would remove the one thing women can't do without men. This might lead to a world where women hold all the cards and make all the decision about who gets sex, and when. Oh, wait....

Re:One implication

[Arthur B.]

Maybe the term can of worm was improperly chosen. I welcome this development in biotech, but if it happens, it will have a lot of unforeseen consequences and not all of them will be good. I for one favor individual liberty and a proactionnary principle, so go for it.

Re:One implication

[Anonymous Coward]

People are stupid. Homosexual couples adopting children is considered a hot topic in some communities. Compared to that, this is huge.

Re:One implication

[Anonymous Coward]

This is also exciting for us male-to-female transsexuals who can't produce sperm due to hormones or surgery.

Re:One implication

[Palshife]

Besides the obvious? Homosexual couples can't currently conceive children. This could grant that ability. That's pretty huge.

Re:One implication

[thesandtiger]

Infertile heterosexual couples can't currently conceive children. This could grant that ability. That's huge. So how is the sexual orientation of the couple relevant?

If the OP had said "This will allow people who couldn't have conceived the ability to have children, this opens up a can of worms" then sure - but he (and you) specifically mention the sexual orientation of the couples as being relevant. I'm just trying to understand why.

Is it because gay people would be able to have children that share the dna from 2 same-sex parents? Is it because gay people having kids is an ethical concern? Is it squeamishness about gay folks being able to have children?

Re:One implication

[Thiez]

I was going to make a 'Having chromosomes can really bring you Down!' joke but feel the need to point out that humans have 2 * 23 = 46 chromosomes. Having 52 chromosomes means you're a platypus.

Re:One implication

[Mesa MIke]

Oh, yeah. My bad.
23, not 26.

Re:One implication

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Re:One implication

[Palshife]

Is it because gay people would be able to have children that share the dna from 2 same-sex parents?

This is obviously what I meant.

Re:One implication

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course there is. But if you can't see it now then I'm afraid nothing I can say will convince you.

Re:One implication

[swebster]

The sexual orientation is irrelevant. What is perhaps interesting is two people of the same sex conceiving a child. It would be similarly interesting if two heterosexual people of the same sex conceived a child this way (could just be friends or something). I'm not sure if this qualifies as opening a can of worms though. I also don't know much about genetics and the ramifications there...

Re:One implication

[Hurricane78]

Well ethical: Everybody can do what he likes, as long as he does not hurt someone outside of his bio-mass. (Which means children are the same bio-mass.)
Moral: Wouldn't that be the same thing in this context? Or are you referring to the word being used as a tool to enforce false values (like nudity/sex being somehow bad)?

But the only problem is, that it is not the usual way of reproduction. So of course it will have some differences.
Which can be good, but also bad.

So there will be problems.
The question is: So what? ^^
Our moral rules (as stated in the first paragraph) already cover that. It hurts nobody, so it is their freedom.

We are way beyond normal biological reproduction anyway.
One can even say that there is a whole new level, where mindsets are lifeforms, and they reproduce like normal lifeforms.

I, for one, say: Let's try it, have some fun experimenting, and see what results we get! The worst thing happening can be some children of children of children being unable to survive, or infertile in an unfixable way, making it a bad try. But we will only see what will happen, when we try it!

The only thing I oppose, is fixing genetic things that should make the people lose natural selection. Because that would be unfair and discriminating to everyone else.

Re:One implication

[Hurricane78]

Hey, I see one problem with this: Where will two women get the Y chromosome from? They do not have one, you know. ^^

No as far as I know, they could only produce other girls.

O, and I now see another problem: The male/female population balance could go way off, leaving practically only one gender. I think that would be very bad.

Re:One implication

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, this tech would only grant them the ability to have male kids, for one.

Re:One implication

[corbettw]

No, because there would still be at least a portion of the population having babies the old fashioned way. At worst, the balance would go in the direction of the old Beach Boys' song about Southern California ("two girls for every boy"). And if porn has taught me anything, it's that that would be very good.

Re:One implication

[corbettw]

Marriage itself is "unnatural" in the most literal sense of the word, so that's hardly an argument against having multiple donors to a given person's genetic makeup. And if all of those people consent to the procedure, I find it difficult to imagine why it would be unethical to do that (as long as there's no fraud involved, of course). Granted, ethics applies to what we do and morals apply to why we do it. So there may be an argument against the morality of combining more than two individuals' DNA into a new person (well, three, actually, since we already have surrogate mothers who invest a certain amount of their DNA through feeding and caring for the embryo in utero...a certain amount of that DNA inevitably winds up in the developing child's body), but I'm unaware of what it might be.

Re:One implication

[cffrost]

"big can of worm"

Probable typo, GP likely meant "big can of sperm."

Re:One implication

[Anonymous Coward]

... and a very bad idea.

Re:One implication

[HellYeahAutomaton]

Our moral rules (as stated in the first paragraph) already cover that. It hurts nobody, so it is their freedom.

Does it? Their offspring become part of the society that we are in and will need to be supported from cradle to grave. The burden these mutant children will bring is indeterminable and cause for concern for everyone. Sorry, this is why "try it and see" is a bad idea. Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should!

Someone will have to pay for the "worst thing happening", and chances are it will be everyone punished for these bad ideas.

Re:One implication

[that IT girl]

It's about the fact that no matter what we as individuals think, it WILL cause a huge controversy.

Re:One implication

[Anonymous Coward]

This has many more useful purposes, given it can be refined into something useful

I had a friend who got cancer and was never told to make a donation prior to treatment......the chemo sterilized him.

I'm sure there are quite a few people born sterile, or otherwise become so prior to their reproductive stage in life.

And as others below said...i don't see how it's a big can of worms for anyone who isn't a religious zealot that otherwise will respect another persons humanity.

Re:One implication

[Trogre]

I don't know. Once they manage to suppress DNA errors in narrow breeding pools would you suggest there would still be some kind of ethical or moral problem with siblings having children together? Or parent/offspring couples?

Re:One implication

[thesandtiger]

Yes, though for entirely different reasons. Parent/child relationships have staggering power imbalances - it is virtually impossible to imagine a parent/child relationship that would produce offspring that isn't at core an abuse of the powerless person by the powered one. Sibling relationships may not have the power imbalance, and might thus be less objectionable.

I can't speak to morality as I am cheerfully amoral (being an atheist and thus not having any kind of universal yardstick against which to measure my actions). On the ethical side of things, however, and using a definition of "balancing the most good to the most people with the least harm to the least people over the longest possible term" - then no, I can't seen an ethical issue with same-sex couples being able to both contribute biologically to their child assuming the health of the child is not at issue. I do see an issue with the parent/child offspring in that it's very hard to come up with situations where such a relationship wouldn't be abusive (and possibly lead to abuse of the offspring). I'm not sure if I see an ethical issue with siblings producing children together as I don't imagine that such a thing would happen often enough to lead to overall removing variety from the gene pool (harming humanity as a whole), but there could be some rather funky power dynamics going on.

The absolutely last thing I'll say on this subject is this: Just because someone else was told by their cleric that consenting adults who are harming no-one are icky and bad, and just because these people are extremely vocal about it doesn't actually translate into a real ethical puzzle. Back before studies had been done about the effects of having 2 same-sex parents (either adoptive, or one is bio), it might have been reasonable to be skeptical about the wisdom of allowing same-sex couples to be parents. But the research has been done, there isn't any negative effect, so there are no rational reasons to be bothered by it and no rational basis for ethical concern.

Re:One implication

[defireman]

It is worth noting that researchers could generate IVD sperm only from male embryos; when they tried using stem cells from a female embryo, they were unable to get sperm to mature past the spermatogonial stage. That suggests that genes located on the Y chromosome, which female cells do not contain, may be essential for triggering the maturation of the primitive sperm cell.

I think we will need a way to make egg cells from stem cells, not sperm.
Which we have the material for - get two male stem cells, splice the X chromosome out and put in the other, and volia! An XX stem cell ready to mature into an egg. Seems that women cannot reproduce without men, but men can (eventually) reproduce without women!

Re:Sperm Shortage?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Something that I know would make them both very happy.

It is a mystery to me that this skill, intellect and research funding was used to the end of ``making people happy'' instead of, for example. determining how to reduce chronic pain for those with a lifelong affliction.

really?

[Anonymous Coward]

"...the announcement has been greeted with mixed reaction from colleagues who claim the procedure is ethically questionable and that the gametes produced are of inferior levels of maturation."

"No! YOUR synthetic gametes are at inferior levels of maturation!"

"Nu uhh! YOURS ARE!"

"SHUT UP!"

Men No Longer Needed

[TrailerTrash]

Not that we necessarily were, according to some...

If this procedure became easy/commonplace, it would greatly facilitate lesbian genertic reproduction of two women, vs. one woman and a sperm donor. Since the stem cell used to create sperm would be XX, all resulting children would be female. Interesting to think of a slight but perceptible shift to a significant female majority world population (or population in developed countries).

Possible consequences: less war; economic trouble for the TV and gaming industries; the slow decline of monster trucks; the world domination of Oprah and The View.

I for one welcome our new female overlords. Mistress. *grovel*

Re:Men No Longer Needed

[TheSync]

it would greatly facilitate lesbian genertic reproduction of two women, vs. one woman and a sperm donor.

Or of one woman with herself (though at greater risk of genetic disease).

Re:Men No Longer Needed

[sanosuke001]

Less war? Women HATE each other. Even best friends will talk behind each others backs at the drop of a hat.

Russia whispering to China: I heard the US said your hair looked too brown
China to Russia: Oh SNAP! WHERE'S THAT NUKE BUTTON?!

And women are much more emotional than men. I don't see a matriarchal society working very well... (yes, much generalization but this is much more likely than the opposite)

Re:Men No Longer Needed

[SupremoMan]

1)There is already more women than men.

2)There is not that many Lesbians.

Re:Men No Longer Needed

[drsmithy]

Possible consequences: less war;

Lot more assassinations though.

Re:Men No Longer Needed

[FiloEleven]

I don't see a matriarchal society working very well... (yes, much generalization but this is much more likely than the opposite)

Not really. You're disregarding that the past six thousand years or so has been a male-centered epoch. It's quite plausible that the only reason "women HATE each other" is due to centuries of behavioral leakage from their dominant (and dominating) male counterparts.

Of course I am painting with an equally broad brush.

Re:Men No Longer Needed

[vakuona]

1)There is already more women than men.

Not true. Check World factbook. There are actually more men than women in the world.

The number are approximately 3,412,990,488 men and 3,377,071,728 women around.

Re:Men No Longer Needed

[petrus4]

Possible consequences: less war;

Yes, because as we all know, women hating anyone, or being violent, absolutely never happens. You might want to go and look up some statistics concerning domestic violence among lesbians; I suspect you may be surprised.

In my own observation, women have just as much capacity for spite, hatred, and general vindictiveness as we do; they're just less direct in how they go about expressing it.

Here's some more proof; if women as a gender are any more inclined towards positive treatment of other life forms in general than we are, then movement towards an exclusively female society will not happen. I'm very familiar with the misandronistic line that it's simply payback for however many millenia of male dominance; but if they were really any better, they wouldn't simply be clamouring for the shoe to be on the other foot.

They'd be looking for a way in which we could both actually co-exist in a positive way, without either gender being held down by the other.

Women who aren't mentally ill (and I'm hoping that at least a few of them read Slashdot, and will back me up on this) understand something which their mentally stable male counterparts also do; namely that man and woman are both equal halves of the species, and both halves ideally depend on each other in order to survive. Chauvanism is wrong, whether it is practiced by male or female; when woman suffers, man really suffers with her, and vice versa.

That is something which mechanistic, atheistic science cannot change; and we as an entire species will simply be destroyed by it if any of us try.

Re:Men No Longer Needed

[Ogi_UnixNut]

Mod parent up! (If only I had mod points)

Re:Men No Longer Needed

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see a matriarchal society working very well... (yes, much generalization but this is much more likely than the opposite)

Not really. You're disregarding that the past six thousand years or so has been a male-centered epoch. It's quite plausible that the only reason "women HATE each other" is due to centuries of behavioral leakage from their dominant (and dominating) male counterparts.

Of course I am painting with an equally broad brush.

IMHO, a truly matriarchal society would have significantly less large-scale warfare, but far more personal vendettas carried-out through a variety of means. However I'm not certian whether these vendettas will be skewed towards violent blood-feuds or to more subtle and calculating means. I do expect the few actual wars to be much longer but lower-intensity conflicts punctuated by violent flair-ups, perhaps something like the Hunderd Years' War (although not necessarily started for the similar reasons).

Unix has been killing sperm for decades.

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, something to restore the balance.

So Clevon should regain full reproductive function

[straponego]

Get your hands off my junk!

Actually... we are one step closer to...

[denzacar]

Embryo space colonization - just send a lab.
No humans need to make the trip.
Not so great for the human civilization, but various religious and minority ideological groups will love it.

Bad news for JAV actors

[McGregorMortis]

This will revolutionize the Japanese Adult Video industry! They won't need to hire 50 guys to make a bukkake video.

Re:Bad news for JAV actors

[myowntrueself]

They won't need to hire 50 guys to make a bukkake video.

I always assumed that they faked it using wallpaper paste or something.

One upped

[psychicninja]

Man, this kind of beats the story I was just about to submit:

Human Sperm Produced In The Lavatory

Re:One upped

[corbettw]

This is Slashdot. That's not "news", that's "Friday night".

There goes the Snoo Snoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

:-(

Ah man...

[fataugie]

There goes my second job.

Re:Ah man...

[masmullin]

looks like you'll have to be satisfied by self employment now on.

20 Minutes Into the Future

[HTH NE1]

My wife and I really wish the human reproductive cycle involved external incubation. I'd create a device to post to twitter whenever the baby kicks.

You could call them Baby Growbags!

Huge waste of tax dollars

[Anonymous Coward]

We give these scientists grant money to build labs to work on scientific discoveries. And they turn around and spend all day masturbating in the labs!

come on, people...

[RelliK]

Every sperm is great.

Re:come on, people...

[Anonymous Coward]

if some sperm gets wasted
god gets really mad

Re:come on, people...

[FlatWhatson]

If a sperm is lab-created,
God gets quite irate!

Re:come on, people...

[Anonymous Coward]

When a sperm is wasted,

Re:come on, people...

[Anonymous Coward]

every sperm has his day

Re:come on, people...

[Anonymous Coward]

If a sperm is wasted

Re:come on, people...

[that IT girl]

If a sperm is wasted...

Re:Sperm Shortage?

[dbcad7]

Well the submission says this was from embryonic stem cells.. but who knows maybe the technique is applicable to adult stem cells.

Re:Sperm Shortage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider a man a wife? Then what do we consider a woman?

Moral issues?

[MindlessAutomata]

Ethical concerns? I'm getting tired of silly ideological grounds against genetic manipulation. "Natural" does not mean better," and so long as nobody is hurt by doing this then there's no problem. People worried about ethical concerns over things like this are just luddities afraid of human biological progress. All humans are essentially biological machines, and there are no souls, and the faster people realize that the sooner we can progress past our silly human limitations.

Re:Moral issues?

[Hurricane78]

Well, actually "natural" means "millions if not billions of years of testing in the field, resulting in an unbeatable guaranteed fitness". Of course you could have luck and come up with something better. But it is highly unlikely. And you most likely would forget all kinds of little cycles in nature that are needed to keep things working in the long term.

Wait for the second, third or fourth generation showing all kinds of problems, up to being unable to create the next generation at all.

It's way more complicated than you can imagine. We got the tools, but we do not have the brains to use them properly. That is my standpoint. :)

Re:Moral issues?

[Mista2]

The issue is responsibility for the result. Whoever creates someone using these techniques should be held responsible for the outcome.
Death through genetic disease or deformity would be grounds for negligence or manslaughter. I've no problems with human cloning or messing around with stem sells or artificial reproduction but those participating had better be aware of the risks and results.

Re:Moral issues?

[MindlessAutomata]

So if someone with Huntington's produces children, they ought to be convicted of manslaughter?

Re:Moral issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

[...] and there are no souls [...]

You sound so sure about that, but what does it even mean? Can you describe self-awareness with electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, string theory? There is definitely a gap in our knowledge about consciousness.

BTW, I don't disagree with your general argument about progression.

Re:Moral issues?

[corbettw]

There's an argument to be made that if you know you have a given genetic trait that would be detrimental to your offspring, and you choose to have offspring, and those offspring inherit your trait, that you could be held liable for doing so. I don't know if we as a society want to go down that road, as it means that children would have to sue their parents for giving them life (and a court is unlikely to find the child has standing to do so, since the alternative means the child never would've existed in the first place), but it is an interesting intellectual exercise, regardless.

Re:Moral issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

As you can be arrested for assault for smacking your kids here in NZ, I guess being held criminally responsible for knowingly inflicting a deadly disease on your children seems like a logical extension.
There have been cases of people intentionally infecting others with HIV, so why only stop at virally infectious diseases. What makes a fatal genetic disorder less lethal or intentional if transmitted knowingly?

Re:Moral issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, seeing as we are a product of nature, anything we do is natural...

Re:Moral issues?

[HellYeahAutomaton]

OK, well how about someone stops by your house and kills you and decides that punishment for murder doesn't matter because these "silly ideological" laws against murder shouldn't count against him? No. Unleashing a science experiment as a human should be thought through. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.

Your assumption that people with ethical concerns are luddites is faulty. More than likely they are more informed and (thankfully) wiser than you.

Re:Moral issues?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well actually, you can't prove there are no souls any more than I can prove there are. So you shoot yourself in the foot. Did it hurt?

Re:Moral issues?

[shish]

unbeatable guaranteed fitness ... Of course you could have luck and come up with something better. But it is highly unlikely

• Legs vs the wheel
• Teeth vs knives
• Fingers vs thermometers
• Sense of direction vs GPS
• Mental maths vs the calculator
• Eyes vs night vision goggles
• Hands vs a backpack
• The immune system vs medicine
• ...

Personally I'd say that with the exception of some bits of the brain, design has pretty much owned evolution

Re:Moral issues?

[Jedi Alec]

There's an argument to be made that if you know you have a given genetic trait that would be detrimental to your offspring, and you choose to have offspring, and those offspring inherit your trait, that you could be held liable for doing so. I don't know if we as a society want to go down that road, as it means that children would have to sue their parents for giving them life (and a court is unlikely to find the child has standing to do so, since the alternative means the child never would've existed in the first place), but it is an interesting intellectual exercise, regardless.

Actually, I'd like to argue that the moment we see a child suing his or her parents for knowingly passing on a genetic disease, that we should remove both the parents and the child from the gene pool, just to be sure.

Last thing we need is more lawyers :/

Re:Moral issues?

[LordLimecat]

People worried about ethical concerns over things like this are just luddities afraid of human biological progress

Or have a different set of beliefs than you. Good to know that YOUR belief system and ethical standards are the end-all, be-all however.

Re:Sperm Shortage?

[iamhigh]

Nietzsche stated that religion allows the lowest of beings to survive, and now science is allowing those who by nature were not supposed to reproduce, do so. Idiocracy is coming faster than you realize!!

Obligatory

[nycguy]

I, for one, welcome our child-bearing lesbian overlords...

Why is it...

[MadCat221]

...that they're always trying to synthesize (or obviate) human sperm and not eggs?

Re:Sperm Shortage?

[FiloEleven]

> Something that I know would make them both very happy.

It is a mystery to me that this skill, intellect and research funding was used to the end of ``making people happy'' instead of, for example. determining how to reduce chronic pain for those with a lifelong affliction.

"Reducing chronic pain" is another way of saying "making people happy." This is also not the only laboratory in the world--it's not as if every other possible tech advancement is waiting for this bunch to quit playing with sperm.

Re:Sperm Shortage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just what we need, reproducing those who normally couldn't. That'll help evolution.

And sterm cells from blood...

[johanwanderer]

According to this article here, iPS cells can now be created from blood, does that mean that men are now obsolete?

Very Big Deal

[PleaseFearMe]

All the male humans can die, and the females can still live on. Now, that is a big deal.

Re:Very Big Deal

[Thiez]

Why? I don't see all males committing mass suicide any time soon, nor any other threat to our continued existence, unless you consider the situation where women overthrow us and kill us all a likely scenario (it isn't). So please do explain why this is a 'very big deal'.

Re:Very Big Deal

[Scootesti]

Let's be realisitic, I'm as proud of my Y chromosome as any of us... but all women really have to do to get rid of us is to stop talking us out of the stupid shit we'd find to do (Ie: shooting fireworks at each other, never wearing helmets or any safety equipment, seeing how many bottles of beer we really can take down and pass around) and we'd basically drive ourselves to the brink of extinction, then all they'd need to do is give us a gentle shove over the edge...

Spending research funds to synthesize WHAT?!

[BaronHethorSamedi]

I mean, really. Was there a shortage?

Jurrasic Park!

[Miamicoastguard]

Now all we need is a spare island and some Stegosaurus DNA and we can finally eat Dinosaurs!

Re:Sperm Shortage?

[threat_or_menace]

Oh, thank goodness. Here and my largest concern in life was that we were about to run out of babies on the planet.

Re:Sperm Shortage?

[Thiez]

Evolution has no direction or goal, so it's very much neutral on the issue (or any other issue, for that matter).

The DNA code is universal

[mangu]

For another, how DNA is used and rendered into proteins, etc. is altered by chemicals that are carried along with the cell. If those are stripped away, information is lost.

Not true. The way DNA is encoded into aminoacids is a universal code which follows the same standards in animal, plant, or microorganism cells, with very few exceptions.

Re:The DNA code is universal

[Hurricane78]

Nope, it doesn't. The human genome is actually compressed.
The string of bases can be read in more than one way, resulting in more than one protein.
Something that most organisms on this planet do not have.
Or else some microorganisms would not have more genes than a human.

Re:The DNA code is universal

[nbauman]

I'm glad you're studying biology, but you're wrong on that one.

DNA is a universal code, but it's also methylated http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_methylation and acetylated http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetylation to turn some genes on and off.

Some genes are turned on and off in sperm cells, and other genes are turned on and off in egg cells. There's currently no way to figure out which is turned on and off.

So scientists tried to make artificial sperm and egg (with mice) in the 1980s and they failed.

(I think they wound up with mice that died soon after birth.)

Yes, militant lesbians were disappointed.

The Newcastle researchers claimed to produce sperm, but the only way to prove that they produced viable, healthy sperm is to produce a healthy offspring from it, and they haven't done that. (For ethical reasons, very conveniently.)

So we don't know whether it's really sperm. Sperm that can't produce offspring isn't really sperm, is it?

How come they didn't try it on a mouse first? If they produced sperm from mouse stem cells, and got a female mouse pregnant with it, and produced healthy offspring, then they could say they produced sperm from stem cells.

Until then, I don't believe it.

Re:The DNA code is universal

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but *how* the information in the DNA is used depends on external factors.

Re:The DNA code is universal

[bucaneer]

The code might be (well, is) universal, but the control of what is translated at any given time is not. If you put human genome into a plant cell, you definitely won't produce a human, because cytoplasmic determinants that are present in human eggs are required to make sense of it all. Strict regulation of genes is crucial to the correct development of an organism, and the regulatory factors tend to be species-specific. Other stuff that has been mentioned (methylation, unique structure of genes, etc) also make things difficult.

Re:The DNA code is universal

[B1ackDragon]

... The most immediate, local scale is the intracellular chemical environment of the genes; so, for example, there is recent work on heritable methylation patterns which block the expression of some genes.

Kim Sterelny, Rethinking Inheritance, Journal of Biological Theory, 2007.

who's your daddy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it has to be said....

      who's your daddy?

Great, another article about...

[Anonymous Coward]

laboratory-grown food for Commander Taco!

Screw moral issues......

[gintoki]

We have much more pressing concerns. I watched this on BBC just an hour ago. They stated that in the 1950s men had a sperm count of about 120 million per ml but now its about half at 60 million per ml. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one seeing where this is going. Men are becoming more and more useless as we become more and more technologically advanced (no surprises there). This means that in the future men will no longer be needed for the continuation of the human race. Why the hell would women want a something useless/outdated/outclassed? (this is pretty evident from the love they have for shopping). Now they can have kids without men. Screw sperm donors....they are gonna make their own sperm (Image of a DIY sperm in a petri dish packaged like a children's chemistry set comes to mind). Call me crazy but from tomorrow onwards I'm gonna suck up to all my female friends and be extra nice to my girlfriend so that they will find me useful as far into the future as possible.

Re:So what? Lesbian Utopia

[Anonymous Coward]

Next, all they need to do is to generate an egg cell from a homosexual male stem cell.

Guess Again. Its not that avialability of sperm has ever been a problem. Even the creating an egg wouldn't be that hard with modern knowlege. Now to make a man grow a uterus and maintain Safe levels of hormones for a fetus, that would be a feat!
Imagine Dynamic Hermaphrodism and Limb Regeneration! 4 player mutitap (geneticaly and Physcaly) New stages of arousal (after after after glow) We could give your third leg a third arm! Synesize novel gender complete with novel hormones. The possiblities are only limited by a thing call being a prude.
Current technolgy is so 1890's; Dig a hole, Graft a pole, make sure to leave a shim so the whole( a wound) doesnt heal. Eat some hormone pills.
I think you want to be god more than have a problem with the one anyone believes in.

The more likely senario is that women will now turn their work to killing of men slowly to build their lesbian utopia. I for one fear / Welcome our new overladies!

Inferior levels of what?!

[Anonymous Coward]

... and that the gametes produced are of inferior levels of maturation.

Raise your hand if read "maturation" as something else.

Women of the world, LISTEN UP! Now we can go it

[Anonymous Coward]

Women of the world, LISTEN UP! Now we can go it alone. First, KILL ALL THE MEN. Second, let's get it on !! A world of women, and only women. Think of the beauty, the peace, the lesbo sex !!!

Re:Sperm Shortage?

[Hurricane78]

I'm sorry for that man, but:

Think about it a bit further, would you?

What do you think will be a pretty much guaranteed health problem of their children?

Infertility!

In a way you are reversing evolution by doing this.

Again, I'm sorry for that man.

But if I can't get a child because of something (eg not getting a GF), then, well, I am not the best one to reproduce.
The same thing is true for everyone.

It's sad, because, give it some generations, and they will not be able to make it to school without massive health support, operations, pills, etc.
We already entered that zone.

I wish we had some stronger natural selection going on. Some competition. It would also do wonders for the IQ and body fitness!
Even if I'd lose in this selection (but be prepared for a hard fight ^^), I'd find this the best way.

Oh well, give us 20-50 years, and earth will be so incredibly overcrowded, that we end on a level of deaths that is equal to the level of new borns. Which means, natural selection will become strong again. (I hope this then will finally bring us real interstellar space ships and terraforming. ^^ [A man can dream, can he?])

Re:Sperm Shortage?

[bitt3n]

despite the flamebait mod, OP has a valid point, namely the fact that, as with curing any diseases with a genetic basis, one is affecting the germ line of the next generation (which now contains the disease, whereas the absence of a cure would have reduced this likelihood). Many people are against direct germ-line therapy (ie, deliberately introducing changes into a sperm cell so that the baby grows up with a larger brain or whatever). Yet it's conceivable that the result of fixes like this will be that germ-line therapy is necessary to avoid the proliferation of genetic diseases on account of somatic cell cures. The alternative will be children with multiple serious diseases that must be cured each generation at great potential cost.

Re:Sperm Shortage?

[masmullin]

yeah like all those people in the world who should have died of small pox. I fucking hate science for helping so many people.

unethical?

[masmullin]

I guess the only really unethical thing is that she didn't swallow.

Wrong fucking date representation

[masmullin]

Its 2009/07/08 for christ sakes!

I make this shit...

[masmullin]

... In my pants!

Fighting Darwin?

[Anonymous Coward]

Darwin has ruled on the bad sperm. Give it up. Adopt an unwanted but otherwise physically healthy child. There are millions of them in the world folks.

All the "right to life" people. Stop making babies and adopt children until there is a shortage of unwanted orphans. Or you could STFU.

Re:Women of the world, LISTEN UP! Now we can go it

[soundguy]

Think of the beauty, the peace, the lesbo sex !!!

Think of civilization collapsing because of a spider....

Re:Sperm Shortage?

[JustinRLynn]

Indeed, evolution is more of a concept to describe the result of the way nature works, not a separate thing in and of itself.

News at 11

[Twide]

Just in..Religious nuts against second cumming

I did!

[hotfireball]

I producing it as well, mostly every day. And not only in laboratory, but also sometimes in a kitchen, sometimes on a table in a regular room, sometimes in a bath. But usually on a bed.

Cue the feminist stories

[Anonymous Coward]

One common story when this sort of thing comes up is the idea that a woman would be able to then impregnate another woman by putting her X chromosome into a sperm.

I suppose it's technically true, though such a pairing could only ever produce a female child. It would be interesting... it won't be long before the first child is produced with all female parents. What a fucked up kid that will be :P

Re:Sperm Shortage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Protip: If you're knowledge of western philosophy starts and ends at Nietzsche, you are not qualified to read Nietzsche. If you don't know who Spinoza is, you are not qualified to read Nietzsche. If you have been languishing in community college because you only bother to read "hip" and "edgy" books you don't really understand, well, you're a douchebag for namedropping.

The reason you will never transfer to a four-year college is because you think books only function as cool accessories for your bedroom, like that "trippy" MC Escher print you brought at Spencer's with the pot-leaf keychain.

P.S. Don't bother googling spinoza or combing wikipedia pages to cobble together a response. I know you're full of shit.

What Would Me Do?

[denmarkw00t]

Everyone has been talking about man's role being deminished, and that, potentially, women would rule the earth or at least greatly outnumber us - but has anyone stopped to think about the lucrative genetic prostitute racket!??

Where?

[dark grep]

Makes a change from producing it in the lavatory I guess.

natural selection be damned..lol

[Anonymous Coward]

infertility is nature's way of telling you not to reproduce..

then again, impotence was too...NOT ANY MORE! :p

next step: reversing menopause. "for that poor businesswoman that didn't have time for kids".

Uh-oh...

[Anonymous Coward]

And women always said they didn't need men... now look what you've done! >=[. We won't hear the end of it now.

Re:Sperm Shortage?

[Bob of Dole]

We're also "reversing evolution" by letting me wear glasses.
Oh, and giving me antibiotics and antihistamines.

This is civilization. That's what we do.

Im relieved...

[Sinn3d]

Thank goodness we found an answer to the growing shortage of sperm. Now to find a new way to artificially create grains of sand...

Re:Sperm Shortage?

[that IT girl]

Yes, because there aren't enough babies in the world already. Call me cruel, but infertility seems like {nature, God, Allah, chance, insert deity and/or driving force of choice here}'s way of saying you shouldn't have children. Not everybody has to, you know.

Sarah Palin funded research?

[blast3r]

I wouldn't doubt it.

So in other words...

[StreetStealth]

So in other words, the content of the file is there but it's not much use without the header and metadata?

A certain comic book series anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do I have a feeling that soon all of the male mammals of this world will suddenly die?

cya later fellow men...

[Mattman723]

Who's read Y: The Last Man...

Re:cya later fellow men...

[Steve001]

Mattman723 wrote:

Who's read Y: The Last Man...

I have. A good solid series, and the type of story that it would be difficult to tell in any other medium (except, possibly, as a textual book) without a large number of changes to the story.

HaHA

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdotters will never get laid now.

(No big loss I suppose, it's not like they were gettin' any anyway)

Re:Sperm Shortage?

[iamhigh]

LOL... Sounds like you know quite a few people like that. What's that they say about the company you keep?