Posted on 10/29/2009 10:51:04 AM PDT by TaraP
Human eggs and sperm have been grown in the laboratory in research which could change the face of parenthood. It paves the way for a cure for infertility and could help those left sterile by cancer treatment to have children who are biologically their own. But it raises a number of moral and ethical concerns. These include the possibility of children being born through entirely artificial means, and men and women being sidelined from the process of making babies. Opponents argue that it is wrong to meddle with the building blocks of life and warn that the advances taking place to tackle infertility risk distorting and damaging relations between family members. The U.S. government-funded research also offers the prospect of a 'miracle pill' which staves off the menopause, allowing women to wait longer to have a child. It centres on stem cells, widely seen as a repair kit for the body. Scientists at Stanford University in California found the right cocktail of chemicals and vitamins to coax the cells into becoming eggs and sperm.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
And where do we get these 'Stem Cells'?
That will be awkward for every PTA meeting in the future: teachers talking to test tubes.
Intelligent Design LOL
Call me back when the stems can go through labor & delivery.
:-)
Putting aside the whole right vs. wrong thing...
I think if we’re going to do this, let’s recreate a lot of pretty girls with blond hair and blue eyes.
American society, as a whole, has more than enough orcs to commit murders and rapes and general thievery.
Let’s hope these scientists help populate the U.S. with beautiful Maria Sharapova looking girls. Other pretty girls too! Lots and lots of them.
Done by idiots.
The greatest questions of our age will come down to scientific ethics. Our technology is beginning to outpace, at a drastic rate, the discussion about whether or not something is wise. With much of these advances coming from beyond America's borders, our own laws are going to have a limited influence on whether or not something is permitted.
Take stem cells. Here, many treatments are prohibited due to the use of fetal stem cell cultures. Yet, my eye doctor has sent 3 or 4 patients to Spain to get an injection in the eye for a rare degeneration disease that causes total blindness. She said the treatment was $35,000 but you had the leave the country and she'd arrange the referral. A lot of her patients are Catholic and she said the moment they find out their 9 year old son or daughter won't be able to see, they lose all inhibitions or religious convictions because their one objective is to do whatever it takes to protect their child.
Ethical? Moral? I'm 100% Pro-Life but I'd do everything in my power to protect my kids; there's no way I'd let them go blind if I could do something about it, regardless of the cost. The new frontiers are causing things to get messy.
Do the stem cells come from a tablespoon of dust?
Maybe some day making babies the old-fashioned way will become retro-cool.
Why don’t the women just enslave us men and turn us into mere objects?
Precisely. My posting name is taken from a character in Aldous Huxley's prophetic novel "Brave New World." Our current dilemma was foreseen by Huxley and others as far back as the 1930s. The dystopia he envisioned is practically upon us.
We humans are a foolish and arrogant bunch. In Earth's history, the 2-3 million year time span of our species is barely more than the thickness of the ink on a single page of an unabridged dictionary.
The dinosaurs, as slow-witted as we presume them to be, were around for about 185 million years. They would probably still be the planet's dominant species had they not been destroyed by an asteroid or a similar catastrophe. I think humanity will self-destruct by means of our own "cleverness" long before an asteroid has the opportunity to do us in. We can't resist the temptation to play Prometheus or Dr. Frankenstein.
In the year 9595,
Helen Thomas is still alive...
Get yourself prepared. Be prepared for God to provide us with His opinion of mankind trying to step into His shoes. Personally, nothing our imaginations can conjur up can prepare you for how God will chastise the world for this “science.”
My name is 905!
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