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Could Women Grow Their Own Sperm?
Anna Smajdor, an ethicist at the University of East Anglia, claims that people’s
control over their reproductive choices will be dramatically altered if sperm and
eggs can be created from stray skin cells. A woman could, for example, pick up a
bit of bodily detritus from a prominent man, take it to a laboratory and give birth
to his genetic child. Smajdor says that what has been termed ‘reprogrammable
biology’ gives us the capacity to make cells act in new ways, blurring what we
mean by an egg or sperm or even embryo. She points out that the boundaries
between these categories have become very fluid, with the development of
techniques that allow us to alter their genetic make-up or prompt them to behave
in new ways. This raises very perplexing questions about ethics, law and
regulation.
Most religions would welcome ways of giving infertile men and women a
possibility to produce sperm and eggs, although they might object if making
gametes involved destroying human embryos. Research into the reproductive
process has triggered debates among scientists about how far human
reproduction should be altered. All agree that men should be capable of producing
eggs: the fact that men have an X chromosome, like women, should make it
possible. Thus, male gay couples could, with the help of a surrogate mother,
have their own biological baby. But things are more complicated when it comes to women becoming fathers: some scientists believe that the
Y (male) chromosome is so important to sperm that attempts to use female cells will be doomed. But on one point, everyone can agree: for
women to father children and men to make eggs would be as significant a breakthrough as the birth of the first test tube baby 30 years ago.
Adapted from The Daily Telegraph, February 12th, 2008
