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

They absolutely will be able to gestate a baby in a simulated womb soon. No question. That will be a huge money spinner.

My husband has depression. Mild depression but enough we wouldn't be considered for adoption. I genuinely either wanted my own children or lots of cats to be honest. 🤷

Surely no-one should be having a child if they can’t cover the costs?

Adoption is not a tool for growing a family and shouldn't be treated or marketed as such. Adoption is trauma, and should only be taken on by those ready to acknowledge and work with serious trauma. So many people advocate for adoption thinking it's fluffy and lovely. It isn't. It's totally different to giving birth to a child (whether through IVF, donor eggs or naturally conceived).

Such babies will not have had the experience of bonding with their mother before birth. One wonders what the long term effects of that deprivation might be.

You could have adopted from abroad. Well, you got what you wanted and that's that.

Yep. They will certainly be different.

International adoption encourages child trafficking. There's a huge amount of trafficking that goes on in international adoption. Don't become so blinded by your position that you advocate for even worse things.

Erm no? Why would I adopt from abroad if I can't adopt ones from here? It isn't like a dog. Anyway maybe you should consider that asking someone why they didn't adopt is just not nice and keep it in your head. Infertility is hard enough to deal with with ignorants like you.

I disagree wholeheartedly that international adoption is worse than this.

Do you think adoption from abroad enables people to skip the usual approval procedures in the uk? It doesn’t. You still need to get approved and you have to pay for this yourself. You also have to live in the country you want to adopt from for a specified time, which means taking a lot of time off work. Which means it’s mostly for wealthy people.

It’s horrendous. They are creating aliens for want of a better word.

She is my child. I carried her and gave birth to her. I am her biological mother both in science and in law. She was grown from my flesh, had my blood running through her veins, her DNA is in my blood stream and her DNA has epigenetic changes from my body. Children born by egg donation are considered to have two biological mothers in science. My husband is her father because his sperm is fine. She is both of ours, we are both here biological parent.

Putting aside the fact that telling someone their child isn't theirs because you don't personally agree with the treatment they needed to become a parent is purely spiteful, to claim she isn't my child is just ignorant.

I didn't adopt because I didn't want to raise someone else's child, I wanted our child. And our child is exactly what she is despite your misinformed opinion. I wanted to carry her and give birth to her and to know her from before she was born and have her grow up with her birth parents, in a loving home knowing how wanted she was. I didn't want to meet her when she was already two and have to work through all the trauma that comes from being born to parents who didn't want her or weren't able to care for her. I admire people who can do that, it's a beautiful thing but it wasn't for me. The cure for infertility is not just getting a baby, any baby, from somewhere to fill the gap and call it a job done. It's more ignorance from you to think it is.

Asking someone unable to conceive naturally why they don’t adopt is such a dick move.

Adoption is not a substitute for having biological children. It’s wonderful when people are able to give a vulnerable child a home via adoption rather than that child remain in foster care but it raises all sorts of issues and difficulties which do not apply to biological children.

There are children in really extreme desperate poverty in less developed countries more desperate than the UK with more lax requirements for adoption. If someone's husband's depression means they can't adopt here I'm sure another country wouldn't rule the couple out over that with kids literally starving to death.

Instead of doing something honourable selfish people create an adopted baby who will never know his or her Mother for their own ends and whims. There's literally nothing good about doing that, it is completely selfish and wrong imo.

They aren't her biological children.

That's fine. Here's some reading about the potential issues with international adoption to gently challenge that view:

https://sites.uab.edu/humanrights/2018/03/13/orphan-fever-the-dark-side-of-international-adoption/ - centres on the "Orphan Fever" period

https://nonprofitquarterly.org/how-international-adoption-is-failing-children/ - this talks about how many international adoptees had their papers falsified and may have been victims of trafficking for adoption

https://jiasunlee.com/health-com-my-experience-with-transracial-adoption-as-an-asian-person-in-a-white-family/ - the experience of JS Lee who was adopted by a white family - it doesn't specify whether she was adopted internationally or not, but many international adoptions will be transracial therefore it's relevant, and she advocates for relative / kinship guardianship over adoption.

I think donor conceived is different to surrogate though.
I get that the "genetic link" is important to some people (and can have medical implications). But I think understanding that someone contributed their sperm/egg so that mummy can have a baby is maybe easier than someone carried you in their stomach for 9 months and then gave you to mummy. I guess it depends on what you think is the more important aspect of motherhood, the genetic link or the physical act of growing a child. I think the second part is quite downplayed, especially by men, because it's seen as just being a carrier. I can see how from a male perspective the "genetic legacy" is the most important but women aren't just a vessel. Their body is actively creating a child.
There are recent issues in Georgia and other places where (post communism) women had their babies sold post birth, sometimes against their knowledge, and it's truly dislocating for the children growing up and discovering that. It's even worse if, on investigating, they find that actually they weren't "stolen" as a newborn but sold with the mother's knowledge. There isn't a clear difference to me between a mother selling her child post birth, and a woman prearranging to sell her baby before conception. I don't think the donation of an egg carries the same burden of abandonment https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68055420
And of course adoption has always happened. But that (Magdelane laundries and other ethical scandals aside) is finding the best solution to a pre-existing problem. It isn't creating children with the intention of removing them from their birth parent.

Wow. Just wow.

Taking a child from a third world country, to be raised in another country with no link to the lor culture, heritage or the language they speak to be raised by white saviours is SO MUCH MORE DAMAGING than being donor conceived.

I'm honestly gob smacked you think it is better to take children half way round the world to a place they will never feel they belong to be raised in an alien culture with no links to what they knew as a young child is somehow superior.

It is monstrous. The more I think about it and the older I get the more I come to the conclusion that all donation is wrong, not just surrogacy and (I can’t believe I’m writing this) cloning ffs.
What about the child?? If it you can manufacture human children, without the care and protection of a mother, without that connection, potentially, to any woman at all, how can that possibly be anything but terrifying?
Think of the abject horrors visited on children by men all over the world. Not all men etc etc but there are too many sickos to count.
You know what? It’s shit if you want children and you can’t have them. Sometimes life deals you a bad hand. Some people get cancer, some people have to live with incredibly challenging obstacles.
Thats the human condition. We are not entitled to design and create life just because we can, when the product of that is an innocent child.

There are ethical issues with donor eggs too. It's a much more invasive process than sperm donation and can have consequences for the donors. But what is involved in this would mean:

• the egg cell from one anonymous woman is stripped of all its genetic material
• the genetic material from someone else is artificially placed inside it and then half of that chucked
• The egg is then fertilised with more genetic material
• the egg is then placed in the body of another (unimportant) woman until birth
• the resulting baby is then taken away from the (unimportant) birth mother after birth and given to the commissioning parents to raise. Presumably the two people who contributed the genetic material. Who may be male/female or male/male or less likely female/female.

It's really hard to work out who "actually" is the parent in that scenario. It's incredibly complicated, in a way it could never be in nature, and just feels incredibly unethical. All so two people can be the "genetic parents". There's a certain arrogance about genetic legacy there I can't put into words.

If it helps, there are much stronger laws on international adoption in the UK than America..so you might be talking at cross purposes. Effectively prospective parents have to go through the same (intensive) process with social workers etc to be allowed to legally adopt from abroad as they do to legally adopt within the country. Of course that doesn't mean dodgy things don't happen under the radar or check fail to pick issues up. There was a recent case where two "parents" were caught bringing a child into the country that they clearly hadn't given birth to. But the principle is you can't go to another country and buy a baby and bring it back with no ssues.
Surrogacy is more concerning because there are nothing like the same checks on the parents. Hence awful stories like the Australian couple where the father turned out to be a paedophile (and this only came to light because they abandoned one of their children. Otherwise noone would have known).

Ah, I didn't realise that.

I have a friend who has had severe ovarian hyper stimulation syndrome (during her own IVF treatment) and ended up hospitalised with life threatening issues and losing an overy (removed as an emergency due to overine torsion), so I am always glad that paid egg donation is illegal where I live (unlike America where young women on university campuses, who have not yet had their own children, are often recruited to do this risky procedure for money).

I thought it would be a good thing if that demand, at least, were removed.

But evidently not.