Scientists Take Step Toward Creating Artificial Embryos (reuters.com)

An international team of scientists has moved closer to creating artificial embryos after using mouse stem cells to make structures capable of taking a crucial step in the development of life. From a report: Experts said the results suggested human embryos could be created in a similar way in future -- a step that would allow scientists to use artificial embryos rather than real ones to research the very earliest stages of human development. The team, led by Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, a professor at Britain's Cambridge University, had previously created a simpler structure resembling a mouse embryo in a lab dish. That work involved two types of stem cells and a three-dimensional scaffold on which they could grow. But in new work published on Monday in the journal Nature Cell Biology, the scientists developed the structures further -- using three types of stem cells -- enabling a process called gastrulation, an essential step in which embryonic cells begin self-organizing into a correct structure for an embryo to form.

Comments

We should be playing God!

[Gravis Zero]

Since some coward has mod points and felt the need to post as AC and mod his own posts up just to say we "shouldn't be playing God," I felt it was only right to balance this by claiming we should be playing God.

Science is all about learning how the world works and testing it if you can. If you think science is playing God then you should go back to the jungle with the other monkeys.

Re:We should be playing God!

[Rick Schumann]

Science is all about learning how the world works and testing it if you can.

Not that AC you're referring to, but there's this: Scientists come up with all sorts of interesting discoveries and developments and think nothing of it. But then two different types of asshole get wind of whatever it is science has come up with; one of them thinks "I wonder how much money I can make off that?", and the other thinks "I wonder what sort of awesome weapon of war I can use that for?". That's when shit starts going horribly, horribly wrong, because the first guy creates and markets some product without any forethought about what the consequences of it might be (and subsequently skimps on any product safety testing, because he can), and the second guy literally doesn't care so long as he gets a big military contract to produce whatever weapon it is (or he isthe military, and rationalizes any possible negative consequences as worth it for 'National Security' reasons, or 'our enemies would use this without a second thought' reasons).

Re:We should be playing God!

[bluefoxlucid]

one of them thinks "I wonder how much money I can make off that?"

You have to fund the research (and later production) somehow. Scientists and equipment makers do, after all, need to eat. Most corporate profits aren't egregious, but there are a few who maintain long-term high profit margins and need ... addressing.

"I wonder what sort of awesome weapon of war I can use that for?"

Unfortunately, while competition tends to squeeze out those high profit margins as research matures into cheap, consumer-grade technology, weapons of war just keep getting worse.

You have two excellent tools against war: democracy and a strong interdependence on trade. Trade increases production possibilities, to the point that two nations going to war would immediately collapse their capacity to engage in war if they ceased trading with one another.

Unfortunately, technology makes things cheaper, and cheap gene-editing technology allows people to spend $2,000 and produce a pretty serious batch of virulent smallpox in their basements. When the threat is not one of nation-states, we have a serious problem.

this doesn't solve any moral dilemmas

[cascadingstylesheet]

This doesn't solve any moral dilemmas. If you can induce human embryos to come about then those are still human.

Re:this doesn't solve any moral dilemmas

[Rick Schumann]

Did you not ever watch the Blade Runner movies? Replicants were obviously based on human DNA, but even if our biotechnology isn't at the level where we can create Replicants, we already have corporations that patent DNA sequences, even if they're naturally occurring, and GMO foods are most certainly patented and copyrighted, so how is it any stretch of the imagination at all that some company could take stock human genes, tweak them in specific ways, patent and copyright them, and since they're not 'born of woman', call them a 'product' and since they're sufficiently different genetically from humans, say they're 'not human beings'? Granted it would be the Supreme Court ruling of the millennia, but it's theoretically possible if our biotech reaches the level where we can do that. Note we're already at the level where 'designer babies' to one extent or another are possible, and it's just mere laws and ethics that are preventing it from happening (assuming that somewhere in China, for instance, it's not already happening).

Next step: colonizing the galaxy

[loftarasa]

All we have to do now is combine this with artificial wombs and automate the whole thing in seed ships spreading humanity to neighboring stars...

The only question is who raises the newborns in the seed ship. How many adults do we need to have around? Perhaps a generational with only half a dozen people at any given time but that can spawn thousands once it arrives at the chosen destination.

I can't be the first to think of this concept. Can anyone recommend a sci-fi novel that describes a similar idea?

Re: Should not be playing God

[Anonymous Coward]

We murder innocent tumors when we excise them from healthy flesh. If you DNA test a tumor it is decidedly human. (Hyperbole for rhetorical purposes)

A fetus is a part of a woman's body until it can transform it's metabolic rate to survive outside of the womb. Without that tranformation a fetus dies from hypothermia once removed from the womb and must be kept in an incubator until it matures into an independent organism. (Scientifically supported and provable)

It's pure hyperbole to equate abortion to murder. And if you place anti-abortion in a historic and socio-political context it comes from authoritarians that attempt to blame all social woes on impoverished single mothers. (We know social problems are more complex)

First feed, clothe, and educate the children in our poor neighborhoods and I'd be far more receptive to your ideas of what is right thinking.

Is it fair to prioritize living breathing children over a fetus? That should be obvious. Certainly it's not a mutually exclusive choice, we could protect both, but that you can't even protect one calls a lot into question.

Remain a hippocrit and I will continue to dismiss your unscientific position and questionable motives.

Re:Should not be playing God

[cascadingstylesheet]

Hold on a second. You mean using artificial embryos which don't come from real eggs and sperms also constitutes "killing unborn babies"? The process is created exactly to *prevent* real embryos from being used for experimentation.

I'd call this progress in the right direction - this will *save* millions of innocent unborn babies by using artificial, not real, embryos.

If the anti-abortion and/or "no playing God" crowds still protests about this, I'd call it goalpost moving.

That makes no sense to me.

If you induce a human embryo to develop from human cells, then what you have is a human embryo. Implanted, it would develop and mature.

The whole point is that you want to experiment on human embryos. So it's a human embryo.

You haven't solved any ethical problems at all. You've just found another hand waving way to try to say that these human embryos aren't human, because argle fargle.

Re:Great news for Planned Parenthood!

[hyades1]

The only things needing to be tracked back to their lair and killed are a drooling conservative morons pretending to give a shit about babies.

Re:Playing God

[cascadingstylesheet]

Well, if scientists cannot experiment with real embryos due to ethical concerns, the logical thing is to experiment with simulated ones.

Progress needs to be made and the "shouldn't be playing God" mentality cannot have it both ways by ever expanding what's considered a real embryo.

"Simulated"?

These would be real human embryos, created by an unusual method.

A "simulated" embryo would be a computer simulation or something.

Re: Playing God

[White Yeti]

Ol' Ogg still got what was coming to him.

Re:Playing God

[PolygamousRanchKid]

At some point, our playing God is going to catch up to us.

Well all know here on Slashdot that monopolies are bad . . . why should God have a monopoly on creating life . . . ?

He must have paid off some politicians to get the monopoly.

I'll bet those meddling Russian kids put Him into power . . .

God really shouldn't be playing God either, when you think about it.