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

Have you ever seen documentaries about orphanages around the world? This was one about orphans in Ukraine:

There are lots of countries like this.

Imagine if they just birthed female children- which weren't considered humans.

To be used as incubators so they could continue their experiments and the offer up surrogacy/ babies for the highest price.

A lot of the children in the orphanages aren't orphans though. In some cases they have family members who visit them but can't care for them because of poverty or the child's needs. It's a legacy from the institutionalisation of disabled children/orphaned children/children from broken homes in Soviet times. Reforming the systems mean supporting children to live at home with their families instead, or moving them to smaller, family like foster homes... and changing attitudes. There may well be children there who would benefit from adoption, but they often have complex needs and need for more proactive help than most children to thrive.
Charities like LUMOS are actively involved in this area.

Selecting embryos for sex before transferring them has been possible in IVF for decades. It's even been routine for decades, where both parents carry the gene for a disorder that only effects one sex. So that wouldn't happen by accident.

The ethical problems of surrogacy, paid egg donation (or any egg donation not done as part of a mother's own fertility treatment) and of embryos created purely to experiment on are far more immediate and real than any chance of women being irradicated.

This is awful and must be tackled by Ukraine. The solution to this is not international child trafficking.

I assume you are pressuring fertile people to bring foreign orphans into the country and use them to build their family and be white saviours to these poor children too? Instead of having their own children obviously, because this is morally superior.

No child should be born instead of saving an orphan because orphans need parents and wanting your own child is irrelevant according to you. How can anyone actually make a baby when they should be saving the worlds orphans!? Right!? Or is it just the infertile couples who should shoulder the weight of the world's orphansge crisis alone? It usually is in the eyes of people like you.

Exactly - like a ready made meal full of hyrid bits of animals packaged up in something that seems edible but actually has no nutrition because it's been engineered out. UPF turns into UPBabies.
Imagine forming 9 of these with defects and STILL CONTINUING

YANBU, selfish selfish people.

Also -science is figuring out epigenetics with huge advancements in treatment and care incoming. Why are we fucking about with what we have spent so long and billions trying to find answers to?

I honestly can only think it's about creating a race of "children" that won't be considered the same, be it as organ donor or army fodder, they won't be able to get treated using the same techniques. Maybe Trump thinks super race right now. Idiotic and dangerous man.

Will they have jars in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre?

A lot has been extrapolated in that comment. That's not what I'm saying at all. I love people who adopt. It's a wonderful thing to do if you are able to do it.

The children in documentaries like this one have more pressing concerns than their culture and heritage, like not being raped by other children in the institutions, finding warmth in a cold tiled room, hoping the staff will feed them something, hoping for some sort of medical care. Avoiding violence from other children in these institutions.

It has already been done with a sheep

They're experimenting on embryos

The point I was trying to make is- at what point do these embryos have rights?

At the moment they are just making embryos.
Then they will try to grow them and continue to experiment on them- apparently the above embryos had genetic defects.

At what point will the embryos be considered to have rights that prevent them being treated so inhumane and not just as property.

Another Q is are they human just because they have mixed human DNA? Are we still classing that as human when it is made by a manufactured process rather than biologically viable? IVF was effectively mimicry, whatever this is, it ain't that.

If they are fully grown- they will be human, regardless.of any genetic defects- or if their intelligence is impaired because of the genetic defects.

The problem.comes if they don't have any parents- or if the cells used are over 100 years old.or something- so the baby doesn't have an advocate- instead just a business intent on exploitation.

I know it's not the point, but when I think of Brave New World the first thing that pops into my head is that Huxley got foetal alcohol syndrome quite wrong ...

Made me think of Frankenstein

Human embryos can be frozen for up to 50 years in the UK right now. They slowly deteriorate and I'm not sure they could actually produce a viable offspring after 100 years.

@Finteq If embryos have rights then women lose their rights. The USA is an example of this. There should be a list of responsibilities and safeguards surrounding the embryos but they can’t be given rights because that would sacrifice living breathing women’s rights.

Not only is it bad for women, it also creates weird legal limbos for the embryos themselves which are potentially unethical.

That's embryos. If this method was actually developed you wouldn't necessarily need the skin cells etc to be "fresh" so long as they were preserved well enough for the DNA to be intact. So a child could be born where it's genetic parents (whatever that means in this context) were long dead. Even if they weren't, I don't think someone who had donated eg skin cells for use in this way would automatically feel the same protectiveness that a parent would. They would be even further removed from the process than a sperm donor or egg donor today is.

It is unethical and dehumanising, making future generations commodities to be bought and sold on a whim.

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.

We already have this?

We have parents who are shit and neglect their dc.

We have ivf so inherited illnesses which would stop reproduction are ignored.

What, even the paedophiles?
(Deliberately being goady just for the comment)