In the latest issue of the journal Nature a few Stanford University scientists claim to have devised a method of converting stem cells into ova and sperm and can therefore produce an individual by the combining of those two stem cell products! Ofcourse, it means that infertility is really a problem no more - it will be possible to produce stem cells from the skin of infertile individuals and then it is only a matter of making those stem cells into sperm and ova! But it also means that sex is now redundant and so are male and female couples! The mother (the person who gives birth to the baby) can actually be both mother and father! It also means that gay men can actually have children with their own genetic make up if they can find a surrogate mother to house their child in her womb until it is time to give birth!
Interesting possibilities are being thrown up by this development - I'm sure that to people in the legal profession it must appear like a problem wrapped in a riddle wrapped in a conundrum because this raises so many legal issues! Fancy a mother also being the father of a child, is that a legal quagmire or what?!!
But as a person of science I am a little perplexed by this development because ova and sperm are generally haploid, having only one set of chromosomes i.e 23 chromosomes and not 46 that normal human cells have. Now stem cells too are by and large diploid in nature so how do these scientists go about making ova and sperms out of diploid stem cells - the article doesn't dwell on this issue, wish they would have. Also there is the issue that if female skin cells are used to produce ova and sperm the sperm will always carry only the X chromosome because females do not have a Y chromosome, now this would mean that female skin cells can only beget female children! Is the male as a species doomed to be consigned to the dustbin of history? If only for the purpose of generating Y chromosomes the poor male may yet be needed! All this doesn't bode well for humankind it would seem!
With all these new developments in Biotech, students in the future may not require to study science. They need to spend more hours with Algebra to get the X's, Y's and Z's right !!!
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