George Church lab creates ovarian granulosa-like cells from stem cells
elifesciences.org
elifesciences.org
Also, although I'm not sure that I understand this completely, it seems to me that this isn't quite a new development. For example, here's a 2016 paper claiming to do something very similar [1] (with the additional step of transplanting the human cells into mice): https://www.spandidos-publications.com/10.3892/mmr.2016.5191
[1]: From the 2016 paper: "In the present study, human iPSCs were induced to differentiate into ovarian granulosa-like cells (OGLCs) in vitro. Subsequently, these cells were transplanted into POF mice."
A better precedent would be Yoshino 2021: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34437124/, which made mouse granulosa cells from mouse stem cells:
Totally worth it, but I definitely wouldn’t choose to do it if there was any other option.
Point being, the default comment for reproductive research seems to be “Oh no.” And I’ve never understood this. Having babies naturally sucks. It’s difficult, painful, and something that people do because they have to, not because it’s fun. And in the worst case it can kill your wife, which was on the table for us.
Bring on the incubation pods, I say. We have six more embryos in cold storage, and it feels so surreal. We have the option of having a kid when we’re 60 — we won’t, obviously, but it’s literally a miracle that we could. (We’ll probably donate the embryos.)
We’re definitely living in the future, and I am so grateful. More advances in this space, please.
Glad to see she's doing well and hope you have good times with her once she's home!
Congratulations on your baby!
Allowing LGBT couples to have biological children risks undercutting many common biology-based excuses for discrimination. For some, being solutions-oriented is less important than justifying existing biases and saving face.
You then of course get the people who don't actually get that every generation is...well a new generation. For as many displaced and orphaned children as their are, there is not nearly enough for everyone who wants to raise a child to have one (nor any practical way to fix the logistics of that process, even before we get to biological imperatives).
And of course finally you have the reality that none of the people who ever bring this up seem to actually be aware of any of the statistics surrounding it: i.e. most western nations are at or below replacement level, so any population increase comes from migration. Birth rates are also falling in the 3rd world[1] - and this is principally attributed to success in fighting poverty, promoting women's rights and education, as well as family planning work. It turns out population management is easy - it's so easy that we've succeeded at it without even really trying.
Which leads to - as you note - the utterly shitty rhetoric everytime there's a breakthrough in reproductive healthcare. A whole little army of childless 20-year olds who feel entitled to pass judgement on people experiencing reproductive trouble, who want a child, and are going to have...you know, on average 2 children maybe because they're still accessing a high tech medical service.
[1] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/charted-rapid-decline-of...
Ah go stuff it somewhere nobody wants to think about.
Because it's totally rational to understand that exponential population growth will end badly. And at the same time believe that the vast majority of humanity has a right to have children.
It's really not a paradox. Its a naive claim.
The facts being that humans consume and exploit the earth to a degree which destroys it is a - like i said fact - pretty well established.
Sure the earth might hold 10 billion people. But that's not really how to look at it.
No one in the western world will retract from their consumption levels in order to save the earth. Therfore we cannot be 8 billion and say we are not too many.
The western world is doomed as you know it if we are to survive here. And tech is not saving your ass, tech fucked us all over in the first place. Think about how people really believe riding a fucking electric vehicle is good for the planet. Wtf is wrong with people?
But you will perhaps like to live in the forest, eat only local foods and stop driving cars, having no fridge, no running water and wait for the shit to cool down. Of course you won't.
So you really have to be blind not to see we are way to many people.
Call me troll all tou want.
That said, hate to be a downer, but I do want to point out some stuff:
> And I’ve never understood this
Let's just go through a few fairly obvious scenarios that can come from this:
- Once this is commercialized we no longer need women.
- Genetic diversity, thing of the past.
- DNA sequences are patented and owned by biotech at birth, you'll have to pay your loan back for life.
- Kill switch added to every human, such that if you question your authoritarian masters, they'll kill everyone with the given switch. (i.e. cloned slaves)
- Governments can castrate the entire population and control the future (think this wouldn't happen, see how mandatory abortion laws for the genetically unfit - they have quite a few in Europe, Asia, etc).
- Genocide-made-easy, wipe any population you want out and grow a new one
Let's just consider the more mundane:
- We already have children without parents. Imagine the desire for any kind of foster situation when you can just grow your own.
- Elderly parents looking to raise children (say, as you say, in your 60's) could now do so
- Government raising & caring for children...
I'm sorry, I hear the calls for improvements in this area, but... the down side risks are enormous. I personally, think it's inevitable, but I also assume all technology will be used for maximal good and evil. Unfortunately, this technology seems like it has far more evil potential.
We already "don't need men". Other mammals have been cloned or heterozygously created from bimaternal parents, and only females are required for either of these processes.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-45801043
Also I imagine you'll still need a womb to grow the embryo? Ovaries are not a womb, so "commercializing" this alone doesn't obviate the need for women.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/health-50056405
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/03/17/1020969/mouse-em...
And I agree with you we "don't need men"; I'm just pointing out a litany of implications.
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15112
I think it’s relatively close, sure maybe 10 years, I’m not sure exactly. My point, was that this technology is going down this path and theoretically, pretty dangerous
Most of humanity is female. Women are the majority. If we’re getting rid of one of the sexes you’d better hope not everyone gets to vote.
Seriously, the idea that women are only useful to society as baby incubators is the most jaw-droppingly sexist thing I’ve seen on this site in years.
I never said anything close to this.
Further, it doesn't mean I think we should create an authoritarian dictatorship where dictators control cloned slaves. You know, something I also mentioned.
I'm stating alternatives that can occur and what others will think.
https://ourworldindata.org/gender-ratio#how-does-the-sex-rat...
https://ourworldindata.org/gender-ratio#how-many-women-are-m...
Babies need to develop inside a uterus, and artificial wombs are much harder to make than artificial ovaries.
Do these people really intend for these technologies to benefit the broad mass of people?
Not just for ovaries either. Almost all of us need some kind of cloned tissue, maybe with a slight genetic alteration.
"Modeling post-implantation stages of human development into early organogenesis with stem-cell-derived peri-gastruloids" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009286742...
"Pluripotent stem cell-derived model of the post-implantation human embryo" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06368-y
"Transgene-Free Ex Utero Derivation of A Human Post-Implantation Embryo Model Solely from Genetically Unmodified Naïve PSCs" https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.06.14.544922v1
"Post-gastrulation synthetic embryos generated ex utero from mouse naive ESCs" https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(22)00981-3.pdf
This last paper uses a very interesting "roller-culture" system where mouse embryos are removed from the uterus and grown in test tubes.
Best of luck to you and your wife, and please do reach out if you ever need someone to vent to or to chat with.
An unpopular fact: nobody has to reproduce. It's an optional, opt-in choice.
Most people seem to make this choice, like many other lifestyle choices, so it's easy to gloss over the fact that it's a decision that was made (and that that decision has consequences). But a decision it is, and an optional one it remains.
3: I'm definitely excited about in vitro oogenesis and that's the direction I want to take this in the future. Right now, we're not able to reliably get the germ cells to do meiosis, so that's what I'm working on.
What are the biggest bottlenecks?
How do you anticipate such a device will be regulated?
What do you anticipate will be the response from the pro-life right?
From the antiscience antivax type community?
Actually, we are probably very far from that. And obviously, just because something is in the realm of possibility doesn't imply that we should do it.
May I recommend a short book by C. S. Lewis (the author of The Chronicles of Narnia)? It's called "The Abolition of Man", with the intended meaning of "Man" being just the mankind/humanity in general.
A central argument of the book is that a level of technological progress which enables arbitrary conditioning of human beings doesn't necessarily lead to some kind of liberation. More likely, it will empower the conditioners and destroy the constraints that fundamentally define our humanity. If you like liberty and humanity, that would be a grim prospect.
Technologies which would genuinely enable turning a man to a woman (in the biological sense) would also enable a lot of undesirable things (even if you think turning a man to a woman is itself something desirable).
(Submitted title was "George Church lab creates functional ovary tissue from adult human stem cells", which says "functional ovary tissue", not "functional ovary", but ok...)
It's nowhere close to a functional ovary.
Or, worst case, only poor people will be expected to raise children at all, and raising children will become a job/career bimodally distributed to the very poor earning almost nothing raising workers to fuel capitalism and the very wealthy developing dynasties to rule over the poor with.
Have we considered, that despite the "pangs of childbirth" that are a very real part of the experience, that conception, pregnancy, and childbirth are natural processes, not diseases or disorders to be eliminated, and that mankind has been well-equipped to accompany women and support them every step of the way, no matter what obstacles they face, that they retain their dignity and continue to fulfill their vocation of motherhood?
I hope you never express this attitude within earshot of a woman who is experiencing reproductive pain in her life.
Additionally, I never called motherhood a disease or disorder to be eliminated. I only said I hoped the pressure on women to be mothers would lessen! You seem to be projecting here.
This technology feels rife for abuse in building armies or company-grown and owned “employees” that function as property of the corp. Artificial wombs may be cool for people who are otherwise infertile, but to see people so quick to replace natural childbirth with this to “relieve women of the pressure of motherhood.”
This feels like something that people who want a larger labor market would love. The population grows, and they never even have to have the women stop working! We’ve gone too far in the direction of fetishizing work in the USA. We shouldn’t be fighting for women’s work to be equal work with men, we should be fighting for the restoration of the family unit via increased wages that can support a family with only 1 salary. Propaganda has made us instead try to have both parents work full time jobs and raise the kids via daycare and TikTok, because that’s what makes a woman strong and independent. It’s sad to see people fight against their interests.
You should ask the mothers you know how they feel about that? The majority (i'd say the vast majority), consider motherhood the most important and best thing in their lives.
Plus, the only alternative is men? Who by definition cannot be "mothers". So you're describing being raise only by fathers. So.. now the suggestion is just adding pressure of fatherhood? lol
> Maybe we can even develop more equitable societies where any gender can raise any children, or all genders will be expected to raise all children.
All genders, in all cultures, do raise all children. That said, each likely plays a different role. Just imagine some hunter gatherer culture - men provide meat, teach their sons to hunt & fish too, teach their daughters to pick honorable men for husbands, maybe even find honorable men. Women, teach their children to clean animals, make clothes, make food & fires, etc. This tradition has largely stayed the same.
In the first world, Women have changed their roles, as automation replaced the need for many of the tasks. Men have continued to provide a similar role. In both cases, I argue parents are increasingly teaching their children less directly; outsourcing it to "educators". That said, I think it's had detrimental effects on families and you can see that in the depression rates, competency rates, divorce rates, etc.
Yes, I know many women of my age. They feel really, really pressured to be mothers even when they don't want to be. Several women I know literally had to cut people out of their lives due to verbal abuse trying to pressure them to be mothers! Every mother I know also has expressed how exhausting motherhood is and emphasized how it should be an entirely uncoerced choice.
How many women do you speak to casually about this sort of thing?
And women are pressured to enter the workforce; in fact they're forced to take extensive education, enter the workforce, and to establish a career, and all that takes effort and resources that won't be invested in motherhood or family. So, it's understandable that women rarely hear about the joys of permanent, fruitful, faithful matrimony and motherhood, and that the prevailing winds should whisper into a woman's ear that motherhood is a drag, pregnancy is a horrific experience you'll never recover from, and the best thing to do is not let yourself be weighed down by the bonds of love and intimacy with a husband or children.
I never said pregnancy is a disease, or that motherhood is a drag. I said I've spoken with mothers who have said motherhood should be uncoerced. I said I know women who have chosen not to have children and have needed to escape verbal abuse from people who pressure them, and I hope the ability to have children without a woman involved will societally lessen the pressure women have to be mothers. I want the only people who are mothers are people who want to be mothers, not people who feel that just because they are a woman they must also become a mother. This leads to really painful, desperately sad places psychologically for women who are infertile, have miscarriages, or lose their fertility through the natural aging process.