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Turning stem cells into human eggs

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Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#91

Post by anonporridge »

marcthe12 wrote: post #87
anonporridge wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This raises an interesting point in general in any area where consciousness is taking more control over things that have always been subject to unconscious nature. In this case, when natural conception results in deformity, genetic illness, or just generally unfit offspring, there's no one to blame. I suppose you can get mad at God, but we have yet to figure out how to sue them. But when human actors start making cho…

> I suppose you can get mad at God, but we have yet to figure out how to sue them. That is actually a plot of a Bollywood film "OMG: Oh my God" where after an earthquake demolished the protagonist's shop and denied insurance payment due an "Act of God" clause, he sues God in court.

Haha. Seems like a "Bruce Almighty" kind of film.

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#92

Post by 8eye »

willmorrison wrote: post #13

Seems completely unethical to me. This would be more of an advancement for eugenics than anything else. Would people be scared of giving blood at blood drives? Could celebrities who don’t want to have children have cells taken from them and put through this process?

it’s kind of disturbing, what about pair bonding? imprinting stuff like that at a young age, also will people grow cold towards these people or treat them as subhuman one day? i know this sounds negative but i worry that this will lead to some type of genetic war eventually.

it sounds sci-fi’ish/black mirror but honestly this seems like it will eventually happen, given how terrible some people treat others purely based on their eye color, height, skin tone etc. or what’s more, will this create people so perfect or beautiful that natural humans decide to worship them?

it already happens with celebrities. what if one of these people end up being extremely handsome and but extremely deceptive, like hilter meets [insert attractive person here], or add to that highly intelligent as well. people already have followed cult leaders for their charisma and honesty it doesn’t seem like society has changed enough to not do any of these things. for example this year/last year and the year prior was a already a good sample size of the madness that people are okay with being. anyways something for all of us to think about.

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#93

Post by NaNDude »

Bender wrote: post #74
anonporridge wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm unconvinced that the "best possible person" (if you grant such a thing even exists) is that much different from an average person. This seems like an absurd thing to believe for anyone who has a solid grasp of how evolution by natural selection works. Or rather, it's absurd to believe that even a small improvement from the average isn't a HUGE advantage for a person's success in life and genetic legacy.

We bypass natural selection all the time. Some people are more vulnerable to certain pathogens. We give them medicine or vaccines to mitigate mortality. Natural selection would have us let nature take its course. Some people have religious beliefs that in fact route people towards nature or God determining mortality rather than medicine.

natural selection is a cultural myth (like everything talking about an undefined "nature"), may be you'r thinking about evolution theory which is driven by reproduction success, but we already bypass it, living far beyond our fertility time :)

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#94

Post by LinuxBender »

NaNDude wrote: post #93
Bender wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We bypass natural selection all the time. Some people are more vulnerable to certain pathogens. We give them medicine or vaccines to mitigate mortality. Natural selection would have us let nature take its course. Some people have religious beliefs that in fact route people towards nature or God determining mortality rather than medicine.

natural selection is a cultural myth (like everything talking about an undefined "nature"), may be you'r thinking about evolution theory which is driven by reproduction success, but we already bypass it, living far beyond our fertility time :)

Agreed, though I intentionally conflate the two concepts as one. That is just my own personal view of evolution and natural selection. I for one would like to do an experiment where we pass a law allowing the removal of all warning signs, warning labels and guard rails both literal and visual.

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#95

Post by Viliam1234 »

willmorrison wrote: post #13

Seems completely unethical to me. This would be more of an advancement for eugenics than anything else. Would people be scared of giving blood at blood drives? Could celebrities who don’t want to have children have cells taken from them and put through this process?

> Could celebrities who don’t want to have children have cells taken from them and put through this process?

Later, they will be sued for child support, of course.

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#96

Post by vanattab »

KorematsuFredt wrote: post #78
bradleyjg wrote: post #41

More realistically, because the technology could turn eggs into a manufactured resource, it could supercharge the path to designer children. If doctors can make a thousand eggs for a patient, they’ll also be able to fertilize all of them and test to find the best resulting embryos, scoring their genes for future health or intelligence. Better still you can do it iteratively. Take cells from one person and turn them i…

Yes. That would be the day. I would love to have many children but I hate the notion of pregnancy. Once we can also grow them in labs I think it would be really great day for humanity. You could ship only embroyos to Mars and then let them grow into babies. (You will still need people to take care of them but we can ship only few hundred people with few million embroyos to colonize a distant planet.

300 adults to take care of 3,000,000 million kids and maintain the colony. Talk about overworked parents.

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#97

Post by claytonius »

ravitation wrote: post #28

From the MIT Technology Review article... >Some researchers sensed that the young entrepreneurs were in over their heads. The science of in vitro gametogenesis is dominated by a small cadre of university research groups who’ve been working on the problem for years. “When I talked to them, they had no clue, absolutely no clue, how to start a project,” says Albertini. “They were asking me what kind of equipment to buy.…

Oocytes are one of the most difficult cells to engineer as well... The mitochondria in Oocytes are turned off from birth because otherwise reactive oxygen species will damage the mtDNA. One would have to use CRISPR to re-build the mtDNA, use telomerase / crispr to get the telomeres to exactly the right length, fix any mutations within the genome, etc. There are many many technical challenges to overcome, requiring further development of multiple immature technology stacks, and the bar is much higher than it is for mice since you would want a baby with the cellular metabolism profile of a 30y/old.

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#98

Post by elil17 »

fakedang wrote: post #88
elil17 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. The current state of gestation is untenable. The child-bearer is sick for nine months and pretty much incapacitated for a good portion of that towards the end. Their lifestyle choices can cause harm to the fetus. At the end of it all, they face a significant risk of death. In-vitro gestation is probably not that far off technologically - we’re already very close with sheep (there was a very successful…

The current state of gestation was the same state as of 10,000 years ago. I don't know how you can term it as untenable. I wouldn't be so optimistic for lab-grown humans. If we are going to be selecting for the best physiological characteristics, we will inevitably end up with a far more homogeneous species. That, apart from all the genetic restrictions the powers that be will create in such an environment.

I’m not suggesting we select for physiological characteristics- I think eugenics is a very bad idea.

I googled the word untenable and I misused it. I just meant bad. Pregnancy is sucks and has always sucked. Most of the world was shitting in its own drinking water supplies until recently - pretty bad. But we invented plumbing and fixed it. I think humanity should do the same thing but for pregnancy.

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#99

Post by anonporridge »

NaNDude wrote: post #93
Bender wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We bypass natural selection all the time. Some people are more vulnerable to certain pathogens. We give them medicine or vaccines to mitigate mortality. Natural selection would have us let nature take its course. Some people have religious beliefs that in fact route people towards nature or God determining mortality rather than medicine.

natural selection is a cultural myth (like everything talking about an undefined "nature"), may be you'r thinking about evolution theory which is driven by reproduction success, but we already bypass it, living far beyond our fertility time :)

Can you explain what you mean by "natural selection is a cultural myth"?

It is possible that we can "naturally" evolve to live far beyond our individual fertility, and humans did live long before civilization. Complex species like humans require a ton of knowledge and skill training. Old and experienced people can be incredibly valuable to a tribe if they can teach and care for the young, even if they can no longer reproduce themselves. It's not enough to just squirt out offspring. You need to invest in them so they can become successful enough to squirt out their own.

There are other examples like this. Like why various types of animals having warning calls for predators. These things don't make sense for an individual to develop, because the warning call actually draws the predator's attention to the individual making it. The best thing for the individual to do is stay quiet and hide. But the call increases the fitness of the individual's kin, so the trait survives.

Homosexuality might be another instance of this, the "gay uncle" theory. Similar to the reason we live long after fertility, a tribe with a minority of young non reproducing members can be helpful for taking care of and training the children.

It's called kin selection, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection

Re: Turning stem cells into human eggs

#100

Post by KorematsuFredt »

vanattab wrote: post #96
KorematsuFredt wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. That would be the day. I would love to have many children but I hate the notion of pregnancy. Once we can also grow them in labs I think it would be really great day for humanity. You could ship only embroyos to Mars and then let them grow into babies. (You will still need people to take care of them but we can ship only few hundred people with few million embroyos to colonize a distant planet.

300 adults to take care of 3,000,000 million kids and maintain the colony. Talk about overworked parents.

300 adults have to take care of may be 600, those 600 can then take care of 1200 and so on. Thought this forum was for folks with basic intelligence.
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