A child without sex or children "to order"
Last reviewed: 20.05.2018
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The natural way of continuation of life, namely sex - a physiological act, in which male sperm fertilize a female egg, will soon replace a completely different procedure, i.e. To conceive a baby people do not have to have sex. This assumption was made by geneticist Hank Greeley, a professor at Stanford University. According to him in the future, people will be able to choose gender, facial features, the character of the future baby, and this approach to conception will be considered quite normal in a couple of decades. The advantage of this approach is that the change in the genome of the embryo will remove hereditary pathologies.
Professor Greeley explained that to create children, only the mother's skin cells will be needed to obtain genetic material, on the basis of which eggs and spermatozoa of the father will be created for fertilization. The new method will allow to receive hundreds of embryos and parents can choose among them the "same" baby.
We can say that on the one hand, mankind has already reached that level of development in order to create children "to order", but according to Greeley, now specialists have insufficient "luggage" of theoretical knowledge, so that the practice of creating "custom" children is widely used, only a matter of time.
The birth of a child without sex may seem an unrealistic and even utopian idea, but this topic has stirred up serious disputes and in various publications issues concerning the ethical side are already being discussed, in particular, whether it is possible to interfere with the DNA of the embryo to rid the offspring of hereditary pathologies. Many experts support Hank Greeley, but there are some who condemn such experiments with "nature". But anyway, the USA has already allowed experiments with genes, during which children from three parents are being created - the abnormal chondriosomes of embryos are replaced by donor ones (from a third party), and in Britain such a procedure has already been legalized.
It is worth noting that similar experiments are widespread, for example, in China, experts have been able to grow fully functional spermatozoa in the laboratory. Studies of Chinese experts can be considered a real breakthrough in the field of reproductive health. The experiment was conducted by a group of scientists from the Nanjing Medical University and the Beijing Scientific Academy. As a basis, scientists took cytokine-treated embryonic stem cells and affected them with androgens, resulting in artificial spermatozoa with a full haploid set of chromosomes. Experiments on mice showed that the female mice, fertilized with sperm grown in the laboratory, successfully conceived, carried out and in time gave birth to healthy offspring, which confirms the suitability of artificial semen.
Chinese specialists intend to repeat their research to eliminate inaccuracies and confirm the effectiveness of artificial sperm. If subsequent experiments show the same results, then in the future, the participation of men will not be required for the continuation of the human race.