Human embryos made from human skin cells

[HeyThereDelila]

AIBU to think we’re sleep walking in to dystopia?

Scientists in the US have created the first embryos using human skin and sperm, raising concerns that babies could be born who ultimately don’t have a genetic female parent.

While this technology looks to be a decade away from being viable, here our fertility regulator (HFEA) met to discuss it in January 2025: they think it’ll be here soon.

Reproductive technology seems to be heading to a very concerning place, with all the emphasis on people who want children, come what may, and none of the emphasis on children’s rights or needs.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g2vyee0zlo

Yes - still need an egg to carry the genetic material, and still need a woman to carry the baby. It's chilling that women in these situations would be reduced to carriers of babies entirely created by men. How can that possibly be ethical? Just because we can, doesn't mean we should.

Maybe I would feel differently if I didn’t have healthy children myself but part of me thinks this is going too far and humans are meddling with things they just shouldn’t meddle with.

The ethics are so worrying precisely because it is by men for men in my opinion. Putin would likely make an army, Xi might make an army of organ donors or for science experiments. Will they be treated as children or cattle?

Considering so many women are choosing not to have children and the West is having a drop in birthrate it isn't hard to conclude that this meant to help women, just uses them.

It isn’t just SCNT, it is a new technique which removes half the chromosomes artificially to create a haploid cell (they’ve called it mitomeiosis). As someone else who has worked in this field, I can’t see it becoming useful at all in the near future. All sorts of issues with imprinted genes, epigenetic reprogramming etc.

My first thought when I read this was WHY.

WHY are scientists wasting time, money, resources on this when we have so many cruel illnesses and diseases we still don't have cures or treatments for?

It’s not about being “uneducated drama llamas”, it’s about seeing the real motive behind this: huge profits and a continuation of attempting to monetise reproduction.

This process isn’t remotely like IVF, nor should we just shrug and move on because it’s apparently similar to cloning and that was done years ago.

It’s treating women’s eggs and uteruses like carrier bags, and for what? For whom? So women in their 50s who don’t have viable eggs can have genetic babies made from their skin cells, or so two men can make a baby.

Do any of you who support this ever stop and put yourself in the shoes of the child who would be one of only a handful in the world growing up without a genetic female parent? We already know many commissioning parents in surrogacy never see/speak to the surrogate mother again.

Try looking at the experiences and testimonies of donor conceived children and adopted adults to see the psychological harm caused.

This is monstrous.

Donor conceived children have been studied into adulthood and it has been found that if the child's parents are honest with them about their birth story from the start and it is just part of their story they are not psychologically harmed by being donor conceived.

Some do not want to meet their donors, some don't. Many are very proud of the fact their parents wanted them so much and that they were born intentionally to loving families, not by accident to parents who didn't plan them. They are no one giant conglomerate of emotionally damaged victims. The narrative that they are on MN drives me up the wall. No one I know in real life thinks this. The most important thing for a child is to have two living parents and to grow up in a safe and stable loving home.

It’s sad when people want children and can’t have them, but it doesn’t justify this kind of experimentation. I say this as someone unable to have children.

But your point doesn’t take in to account all those who struggle, feel a sense of detachment from families or genealogical bewilderment- plenty of testimonies online to support this @GreenFairy93

We’re increasingly seeing “double donation” where a single woman uses a donor egg and donor sperm, often imported. Genetic father may be Danish, genetic female parent Spanish, birth mother English. This is all being done for the benefit of adults, not the children. And egg donation is done by young working class women for money, risking their health in the process. But who cares as long as wealthy people in their 40s and 50s can buy donor eggs, ey?

So they've found a way to take a woman's egg, erase her DNA and replace it with that of a man's. So two men can pay some poor woman in another country to carry their baby and then take it away.

You would think have thought my IVF kids were forty years ago.

Some of us don't want to adopt. I am guessing you didn't did you?

Agree. Reported that all 9 resultant embryos had significant abnormalities. That’s enough to just stop, surely?

What you want is all that matters to you

But why? Why do we need cloned anything at all?

Don't dodge the question. Why should it be the infertiles who should adopt? Anyway it is very expensive and difficult to adopt so maybe they couldn't do so.

I'm sure this will create new retardations embedded in a person's genetic code and in turn introduce new diseases to the gene pool.

Anyone who wants to adopt should. It's honourable and they deserve to be commended for it

Anyone who is concerned about the cost of adoption (does it cost if you go through the legal process in the UK? Didn’t think so?) or indeed IVF should probably not be considering raising a child, which is very costly.

@GreenFairy93 payments have stood at £985 since October last year - a significant draw to young working class women in a cost of living crisis. It’s paid directly in to bank accounts in to flat payments - no itemised receipts needed. It’s payment, not “expenses”. By contrast sperm donors get £45 and kidney donors must provide strictly itemised receipts.

Over 4000 women from the 3 poorest social income deciles have “donated” their eggs since 2011- when payments rose to £750. Over 800 women aged just 18-25 have “donated” since 2000. DHSC didn’t do an impact assessment before they increased payments to egg “donors” in October last year, nor have they ever undertaken studies on the long term risks to women’s health of egg retrieval. Fertility clinics don’t track long term health outcomes in donors either.

Do you honestly think it’s ethical to ask an 18 year old to go through egg retrieval so older people can buy their eggs?

I’m sorry for your illness but you didn’t need donor eggs: you wanted them.

I just think it gets proven time and time again that nature knows best. And we should stay well out of it. The law of unintended consequences….

So children for the wealthy only? Luckily all my embryos came from a NHS round.