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Creating a sperm or egg from any cell?

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Re: Creating a sperm or egg from any cell?

#11

Post by Wiki39366 »

meowface wrote: post #8
yCombLinks wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LoL, why are we threatening to harm the baby? Our current system would require the celebrity pay a huge amount of child support if the dna matches. No laws even look at how conception happened.

It seems fairly probable that if this became feasible and an actual thing people were doing, the laws would carve out an exception. Though I guess it might be kind of difficult to prove, since the surrogate mother could just insist she had an affair with the person.

[flagged]

Re: Creating a sperm or egg from any cell?

#12

Post by Vecr »

One of the main problems preventing human cloning is the trouble getting enough eggs. Even if you don't care about the ethical issues (females only have a quite low finite number of eggs), it's still really expensive. If a small team can get their hands on a whole lot of viable human eggs, they may be less limited by what funders of big research grants want.

Re: Creating a sperm or egg from any cell?

#13

Post by ericmcer »

gnicholas wrote: post #4

> People could even potentially steal the DNA of celebrities from, for example, a clipping of their hair to make babies, he says. "One law we definitely need is to make sure people can't become genetic parents without their knowledge or consent," says Greely. A new type of blackmail: (1) get some trace DNA from a rich person, (2) use it to create a baby, and (3) threaten to harm that baby if the rich person does not…

Why hurting the kid. Just make a kid with both your DNA and then take them to court for child support. Easy.

Re: Creating a sperm or egg from any cell?

#14

Post by solatic »

> "One law we definitely need is to make sure people can't become genetic parents without their knowledge or consent," says Greely.

Exactly when and how is consent given?

Going down this ethical train of thought, one could argue that sexual intercourse only implies consent for sexual intercourse, not consent for reproduction. If the requirement for consent implies a requirement for a written contract, then consent for sexual intercourse does not imply consent for reproduction. If the requirement for consent merely implies a requirement for a lack of coercion and allowing people to continue on with what they have found along the path of life, then surely one should be allowed to make do with the barber's garbage.

Eventually, the discussion should stop revolving around consent and start revolving around commitment. Women should have a right to expect men to decide whether or not to make a commitment by a certain deadline, and should have the power of the courts to hold men to that commitment, should it be made. And nobody should presume that celebrities are making a commitment (of any kind) to anyone who decides that a celebrity's trash is their treasure.

Re: Creating a sperm or egg from any cell?

#16

Post by gearsandbeers »

solatic wrote: post #14

> "One law we definitely need is to make sure people can't become genetic parents without their knowledge or consent," says Greely. Exactly when and how is consent given? Going down this ethical train of thought, one could argue that sexual intercourse only implies consent for sexual intercourse, not consent for reproduction. If the requirement for consent implies a requirement for a written contract, then consent fo…

> could argue that sexual intercourse only implies consent for sexual intercourse, not consent for reproduction

You might also enjoy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_abortion - I stumbled upon this last night and thought about it for a while.

Re: Creating a sperm or egg from any cell?

#17

Post by [deleted] »

solatic wrote: post #14

> "One law we definitely need is to make sure people can't become genetic parents without their knowledge or consent," says Greely. Exactly when and how is consent given? Going down this ethical train of thought, one could argue that sexual intercourse only implies consent for sexual intercourse, not consent for reproduction. If the requirement for consent implies a requirement for a written contract, then consent fo…

[deleted]

Re: Creating a sperm or egg from any cell?

#18

Post by runsWphotons »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #9

If you could crest a sperm and egg from any cell, could it be from a cell from an newly created embryo? As in rapid multi generational directed evolution, the ability to highly concentrate polygenic traits much more efficiently than a bogosort type algorithm.

Yes this is possible. Gwern wrote quite a lot about this several years ago I think.

Re: Creating a sperm or egg from any cell?

#19

Post by arp242 »

meowface wrote: post #8
yCombLinks wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LoL, why are we threatening to harm the baby? Our current system would require the celebrity pay a huge amount of child support if the dna matches. No laws even look at how conception happened.

It seems fairly probable that if this became feasible and an actual thing people were doing, the laws would carve out an exception. Though I guess it might be kind of difficult to prove, since the surrogate mother could just insist she had an affair with the person.

I just discovered this is a thing already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_theft

Rulings differ a bit, sometimes ruling in favour of the man, sometimes for the woman, and sometimes in-between.

Re: Creating a sperm or egg from any cell?

#20

Post by dsign »

This is funny. It's "my son if it has my DNA" is the copyright equivalent of "it's my song if it has my chords." I can't resist:

- "You got a copy of my DNA files. Then you had a child, and they look similar to one of ours. I don't care if you modified it by removing all my faulty genes, or if you wrote the DNA from scratch after looking at mine. I sue you for copyright deft, you ought to pay reparations and the kid should be terminated." ~~ SCO-genomics.

- "I don't care if you breastfed it, it's not a real person if their DNA was generated by an AI." ~~ Twitter mob.

Seriously though, I don't think that parenthood has anything to do with genes.

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