Simviation Forums

Human babies 'grown in lab'
By Oliver Stallwood, Metro
5 May 2005

Human eggs which could grow into embryos have been created in a laboratory for the first time, scientists announced yesterday.  They were created by scraping stem cells off the surface of ovaries and exposing them to a chemical which stimulated growth.

The breakthrough suggests limitless supplies of eggs could be grown, solving the problem of the acute shortage of donor eggs for infertile women wanting IVF treatment.  But the idea has horrified pro-life groups after scientists admitted they could use the technique to 'farm' embryos for their research.

The procedure was tested by a University of Tennessee team, which took ovarian stem cells from five women aged 39 to 52.  Cells which were treated with a type of oestrogen called phenol red grew into healthy eggs.

The US researchers say their technique offers hope to cancer sufferers who become infertile through chemotherapy. They also believe they could extend the fertility of a woman nearing the menopause by between ten and 12 years.

Prof Antonin Bukovsky said it offered 'new strategies' for treatment of female infertility.  Fertility watchdogs will have to approve the technique for use in Britain but welcomed its apparent medical benefits.

But pro-life campaigner Matthew O'Gorman said: 'The artificial harvesting of eggs is synonymous with the intention to manufacture human beings for research. This is unethical, unnecessary and unacceptable.'

----------------------------------------------------------------------

This is totally incredible news!  My only question is where the heck was this for the entire 8 1/2 years we were trying to have kids... ::)  >:(  :P

It was in the laborataries and in scientists heads...

Clone armies! Yay!  :D

It would've happened eventually. Just a matter of time..

Muahaha..

I'm prefectly happy with my method of creating life, it works - as my daughter proves !  ;D

I intend to continue to try to create life, especially on a Friday night after one too many.......  

I'm with Paul on this one, the old fashioned way is just soooooo much more fun than sitting around in a white lab coat and playing with a microscope

It would've happened eventually. Just a matter of time..

I agree with that statement, we have been doing this with other organisms for years-the technology has been tested-it was just a matter of time until someone created a human embryo this way.

But, now thats it out of the bottle so to speak-hopefully it will be used correctly.  I'm not a big supporter of the pro-life movement (or the pro-choice for that matter, I'm somewhere in between) but I can see where this can be used to be a problem.  

As far as human cloneing, that is one big issue that this may cause concern over (although some people believe that a couple humans have been secretly cloned already-but who knows).  In any case, this is an scientific achievement that a lot of people have expected for some time.

This might be a big breakthrough but according to Lord Robert Winston, a leading British fertility expert & broadcaster, it's only the first step. To produce an embryo an egg has to be fertilised. Creating human eggs is one thing. Creating eggs capable of being fertilised is quite another.

Robert Winston's credentials. http://www.shu.ac.uk/university/winston.html

This might be a big breakthrough but according to Lord Robert Winston, a leading British fertility expert & broadcaster, it's only the first step. To produce an embryo an egg has to be fertilised. Creating human eggs is one thing. Creating eggs capable of being fertilised is quite another.

I have heard of this issue, infact I have witnessed it first hand (not humans though).  I'm a Biology student and a while back we lab a lab experiement where were fertilizing artificially grown eggs (the eggs had been created for us) of a sand dollar.  A lot of the students (including myself) had problems with this and it turned out that many of the eggs were incapible of fertilization.  So, this was a very simple organism in comparison to a human-I can only imagine that a funtional human egg would be much more difficult to create.