Fully Lab Made Embryo - Thoughts....?

[SpicyMoth]

Apologies if this has been posted about already but I couldn't see it anywhere when checking!

Just wondered people's thoughts on this?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-66715669

My gut reaction is honestly hard to describe.
In terms of research, I imagine like the article says, it could be far more ethical.
(Though I'm still sceptical, if it is objectively an embryo that they've created, then it would grow into something at some point, thus making it once again unethical surely? Creating life, even if no sperm or egg is directly used and then experimenting on said life, HAS to be unethical by definition doesn't it?)

In terms of everything else though?
It worries me. When we've already heard talk of babies being grown in pods in big facilities as "proof of concept" stuff, or the possibility of women who are in "brain dead" states being used as "birthing vessels" for others, the womb transplant success and it's conversation immediately becoming "But what about men"

I'm just struggling to see a world where this happens, and it isn't a net negative for humanity honestly.
I don't trust "the people in charge" whoever they may be, to actually be doing anything beneficial for humanity with this sadly :/

Agree OP,I find it hard to trust that people who'd use this for every unethical,and selfish, purpose possible would be stopped by society,as apparently we can't say no anymore.

It's almost like the Matrix directors were making a promotional or propaganda film.

That is very fkin creepy. No thank you.

We must protect Mothers at all cost, this is far too dangerous for women and children. Look at the money being pumped into these experiments, where is it all coming from?

It's not an embryo.

It's an embryo model, derived from stem cells, which grew into something that resembled but was not identical to a human embryo. And of those stem cells, only 1% actually did this. It had a 99% failure rate.

So not an embryo, and far from being successful. It's fascinating and very clever, but light years away from being replicable en masse or presenting any possibility of growing a full formed human in a lab.

It's a no from me.

Yes, you're right - but in my mind that doesn't really change much to be honest?

If anything in my mind it'd make the whole experiment's ethicality more of an issue because then, what is it? It's not nothing, it's still cells that presumably could grow into something.

The article goes on to say "The embryo models were allowed to grow and develop until they were comparable to an embryo 14 days after fertilisation. In many countries, this is the legal cut-off for normal embryo research."
So hypothetically, this is an embryo, even if a model one, that could continue to grow and develop if it was "allowed" to.
What would it grow/develop into if, as you rightly say, this is not identical to a human embryo? What are they making?
That in and of itself seems pretty horrifying and unethical to me.

Even if it's not an exact "embryo" in the sense that we know it, It's still something being worked on, being funded, having time and energy put into it.

I simply don't trust their reasoning or what they say this step in science could provide for people - Even if that type of thing is lightyears away, I don't want to be sitting idly by whilst steps in that direction are being made.
Even if those things are the intent and there is no ulterior motive, I don't trust the original intent not be hijacked by activists over time :/

The number of things that biochemists could be doing which would be extraordinary is vast.

Creating faux human embryos isn't one of them.

Thin end of the wedge?

This was my first thought too.

what always concerns me is the stuff going on in labs with human embryos that isn't getting reported on, isn't ethical, isn't being monitored. You can bet there are scientists out there doing things they shouldn't be doing with human embryos.

and to be honest this is way too much into Brave New World territory:

A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.

The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north. Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory. Wintriness responded to wintriness. The overalls of the workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. The light was frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and living substance, lying along the polished tubes like butter, streak after luscious streak in long recession down the work tables."

And this," said the Director opening the door, "is the Fertilizing Room."

I find the concept so repellent that I cant bring myself to read any detail.

No. It's too f***g creepy.

its just another form of cloning, which has been possible for decades. Nothing new

Do not like.

It’s obviously part of a wider agenda. The DNA would still have come from somewhere.

I imagine it won’t be long before child sex abusers will be able to farm their own regular crops of ‘motherless’ children to abuse and discard.

Exactly, these cells are clones of an existing cells whose DNA originally came from a sperm and an egg right? The DNA chromosomes have to come from somewhere.

They haven't entirely synthesise the entire human genome have they? So just a cell line derived from some poor person tumour or something which are embryonic stem cells?

That was my exact first thought. Aldous Huxley and George Orwell both knew what was coming...

Just read up on this and yeah this is being sensationalised. This is just a cell line, line the classic HeLa cell line made from someone's ovarian cancer tumour decades ago. It's cell line, an experimental model to study how embryos divide etc. It's weird but not really different from any embryonic stem cells. They couldn't be implanted and develop into foetuses i don't think, or wouldn't be legally allowed to be kept long enough (mind you I remember forgetting about a few cell cultures at the back of the hoods in my student lab days ... Gulp)

Please tell me this is satire. No-one sane could possibly think this seriously.

I felt sick when I heard about this but was partially reassured when listening to R4 PM, they had quite a lengthy discussion about it. The Dr said it could be used to test medication for pregnant women, something which has been very rarely done since Thalidomide and is urgently needed.
However it does worry me. I’m sure there will be countries who don’t stick to the 14 day laws.

@Flickersy there is lots of research going into finding ways of creating human beings without the inconvenience of needing the cooperation of women or the barrier of protective mothers to access/possess children.

Yes, there are medical ethics in some countries, but of course there won’t be in all. I am fully expecting that there will at some point be a lab on the ocean - like L. Ron Hubbard’s (the founder of Scientology) ocean liner where his child-abusive cult resided outside the laws of any nation, where this research will be pursued without interference.

The male sex drive was apparently the engine which led to faster and faster computer speeds through sharing pornography. So much child abuse is filmed and shared, google any male name + ‘child abuse images’ and you are likely to get a hit of a bloke caught with thousands. The ‘dark web’ is were most of it goes on now.

The people pushing for the research into creating the motherless/parentless child are people like Pritzker, a man with ‘niche’, but obsessive sexual interests.

We are getting all these “Yay! A woman got her womb cut out and sewn into another woman! Woohoo!” kinds of articles, some mumsnetters themselves are looking forward to the development of medically manufactured parentless children in the name of LGBTQI++ ‘reproductive rights’. Do you think that the millions of nonces and their greedy exploiters in the world aren’t pushing for this future?

While some twit is going 'look what CAN be done' anyone with a brain has to be demanding 'and what's the application of this? Let's examine the bleeding obvious shall we?'

I recommend the book The Immortal Life of Henriett Lacks which looks at the origin of HeLa cells, Henrietta's life, and the medical ethics involved.

The application is to examine causes of early miscarriage and other fertility issues. Its in the news article.