Sexual Reproduction for Same-Sex Couples?

Being able to reproduce without needing functional male/female sex organs, using only skin cells and technology, is an interesting step. It could theoretically apply to same-sex couples, the elderly, children, or people with various disabilities, injuries, or other forms of infertility.

The same-sex focus of this article (specifically, the "OMG this totally defeats an objection to gay marriage" bit in the intro) is an unnecessary politicizing of an otherwise technologically/biologically interesting concept.

It's a little tougher than this article makes it sound. iPS cannot do everything that embryonic stem cells can do, and he cited a paper that has been retracted: http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/07/journal-ed...

(bottom line - the "sperm" created for iPS don't really work as such)

It's still probably coming eventually. And why stop there? Polyamorous n-tuples could have a kid who was a mix of varying proportions of the parents.

A lot of trouble for very little? If its absolutely important for your children to be statistically correlated to you, beyond the 99.9% that all humans are ALREADY correleated? It's been said that adoptive children are sometimes loved too.

Women could actually outgrow their "need" for men in reproducing. Its kind of scary.

This strikes me as something that could be revolutionary. Specifically, it stirs up memories of sci-fi novels and movies where advanced races have given up sex and sexual reproduction because it's "Too messy."

Can't wait for fundies to decry this as science overturning the will of god.

The same fundies whose infertile wives undergo medical treatment to enable them to conceive.