New York Times pushes ‘poly-parent’ children created using next-generation IVF

Aug 19, 2020 by Jill

By Martin Bürger, LifeSite:

The New York Times is pushing what essentially amounts to the next level of in vitro fertilization (IVF) in a lengthy op-ed released last week.

Technology currently in development could enable any human being, independent of their sex, “to manufacture an egg or sperm cell from a tiny sliver of their own skin” and thus create a new baby.

In response to the op-ed, several ethicists and medical doctors have come out against this practice in exclusive statements to LifeSiteNews.

The new technology, which has already been tested successfully with mice, is called in vitro gametogenesis (IVG).

The term “gametogenesis” refers to the process by which gametes, namely egg cells and sperm cells, are created in an organism. According to nature, women produce egg cells in their ovaries, and men produce sperm cells in their testicles.

The term “in vitro” simply means “in a glass,” indicating that, in this case, the process of reproduction is not naturally occurring during sexual intercourse, but artificially, in a laboratory.

Debora L. Spar, writing for The New York Times, emphasized, “If the techniques of I.V.G. prove feasible, therefore, would-be families could theoretically begin by creating their own gametes. A single woman, for example, might mix her egg with sperm fashioned from the genetic material of her two best male friends; the resulting child would have three genetic parents.”

“Or she might mate her egg with a carefully selected donor sperm, using genetic testing to eliminate any risk of the cystic fibrosis that runs in her own family,” she described another possibility. “Stem cells derived from the resulting embryo could then yield a next-generation egg to be paired with her best friends’ similarly well-conceived sperm, yielding a child with four parents. And so on. The implications are enormous.”

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