'Manufactured' Babies of Same-Sex Parents May Soon Be Reality
By Beth Greenfield,
Yahoo Parenting
| 02. 26. 2015
[Quotes CGS's Marcy Darnovsky]
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In a world where egg harvesting, gestational surrogacy, genetic selection, and now mitochondrial replacement — aka “three-parent babies,” given final approval in Britain on Tuesday — are realities, it’s not quite as easy as it used to be to find shock value in newfangled IVF methods. But news of yet another fertility breakthrough has been getting attention this week, with some saying it will allow same-sex couples to “manufacture” biological babies.
“It has already caused interest from gay groups because of the possibility of making egg and sperm cells from parents of the same sex,” Jacob Hanna, an Israeli scientist collaborating on the project with Cambridge University professor Azim Surani, told the U.K.’s Sunday Times. He said it could become possible to use the technique to create a baby in just two years.
The latest research has found it possible to create primordial germ cells — cells that will go on to become egg and sperm — by using human embryonic stem cells, explains a Cambridge University press release. “Although this has already been done using...
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