Science moves another step closer to human ‘hatcheries’
by Michael Cook, MercatorNet:
Another step in “an explosion of new techniques and ideas for studying early development” of human embryos came last week from Israel. Researchers there have successfully grown mouse embryos for 12 days, which is about half the animal’s natural gestation period.
The rough equivalent for a human would be a first-trimestre baby. They published an article in Nature last week.
The news was crowded out by another big announced about human embryos: that separate research teams have created artificial embryo-like structures. Both pose threats to human dignity, but of the two, the Israeli research may be more dangerous.
It seems that ectogenesis is coming closer – the Brave New World vision of hatcheries where artificially conceived babies are gestated in gigantic vats.
The lead author, Jacob Hanna, of the Weizmann Institute of Science, was interviewed about his work in MIT Technology Review. He acknowledges that there are ethical issues.
“I do understand the difficulties. I understand. You are entering the domain of abortions,” says Hanna. However, he says that researchers are already experimenting on and destroying surplus embryos from IVF clinics. Using the same logic, ectogenesis is not really a big deal.
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