Japanese scientists working on creating human eggs and sperm in the lab

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/09/28/1200105467/japanese-scientists-race-to-create-human-eggs-and-sperm-in-the-lab

by rntn • 3 years ago

80 138 3 years ago

npr.org

toomuchtodo• 3 years ago

Big if it works for fertility treatments. No more need for ovary stimulation and ultrasound guided egg retrieval (painful and complications can occur), and the math and need around reproductive tissue cryostorage changes for the positive.

kylebenzle• 3 years ago

Despite the concerns, the Japanese government is considering allowing scientists to proceed with creating IVG embryos for research.

Fujita, who's on the committee the government formed to consider this, supports that.

"The technology of IVG, its purpose is not only [to] have a baby — genetically related baby — but there are many benefits and good things you can know from the basic research," she says, such as finding new ways to treat infertility and prevent miscarriages and birth defects.

victor1062• 3 years ago

What if in the future, the state, due to dwindling population growth creates humans from engineered eggs and sperms? The reasons to do this are obvious, no population, no growth, no profits.

Also, what if, they engineer these "artificial" humans to die preciesly when they reach a particular age? The state can then accurately predict retirement benefits, design infrastructure, distribute benefits more uniformly

FpUser• 3 years ago

"What if"

replace it to "when". Hopefully we can avoid it and use the tech to fix health problems for existing people

mysterydip• 3 years ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan's_Run

pineapple_guy• 3 years ago

And what if we are already the product of this process from a long forgotten empire?

a-r-t• 3 years ago

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe...

shadowgovt5• 3 years ago

It's funny to me (and I've done it too) that people mis-remember how Roy's finite life-expectancy plot worked.

It wasn't a feature; it was a bug. The company marketed it as a feature, but in reality (before Rachael, maybe) they didn't know how to build Nexus-6 with more than a four-year life expectancy. When Roy finally tracks down his creator and demands he remove it, Tyrell admits that he can't.

```

Tyrell: You were made as well as we could make you.

Roy: But not to last.

```

It's the realization that his own creator, despite all the marketing hype, isn't a god, but just another flawed mortal... that the two of them are fundamentally equal creatures in this mad universe... that pushes Roy past the edge into madness and eventual redemption, when he realizes that in the face of a universe so cold and uncaring about the life within it, it's only life that can care about life. All of it, in all its forms.

vsareto• 3 years ago

Also, what if, they engineer these "artificial" humans to die preciesly when they reach a particular age?

Pretty much a science fantasy, but what stops the population from engineering it back?

masklinn• 3 years ago

What stops the population from engineering fertility back in gmo seeds?

whatshisface• 3 years ago

Engineering people to die at a specific age is as far fetched as engineering them to live forever, so you might as well imagine the latter.

unshavedyak• 3 years ago

Speaking purely capitalist for sake of discussion, i wonder what would be more beneficial / ROI friendly? I suspect a steady supply of young humans would be more likely to bend to your intentions and goals than a smaller supply of humans that become more wise, bored, etc with infinite life.

Plus infinite life seems a near super power. Would they just hand it to nobodies? Seems like at that point they could produce a special few that live forever while the rest of the plebs have a largely normal life.

And heck, to extend your idea further; if it is equally difficult than perhaps you could do both, not one or the other. So make many mortals and a select few chosen royalty bloodlines that live forever. You get a population you can predictably control and forever royalty.

.. sometimes i'm glad i wasn't born 500 years later.

almatabata7• 3 years ago

I think you could achieve the former more easily than you think. If we suppose you can gene edit to have certain characteristics. Why could they not add birth defects like heart problems and cancer? They then die from a heart attack at 30.

Of course the technology might never get there either but to me gene editing for a birth defect sounds easier than gene editing to live forever but maybe i underestimate the former.

kuratkull• 3 years ago

"In Time" (movie) would be the more likely outcome: time-to-live is transferrable currency.

But in the real world people already die at a predictable age - we are all statistics.

powersnail2• 3 years ago

It might be a good solution to infertility; but since infertility is not the main cause of dwindling population, artificial babies probably won't be effective in solving the general population crisis.

People who don't want to raise kids probably also wouldn't want to raise artificial kids.

If the kids are put in state's care, well, current society can't take good care of existing orphans. How are we going to handle more parent-less kids?

NoMoreNicksLeft7• 3 years ago

If the kids are put in state's care, well, current society can't take good care of existing orphans. How are we going to handle more parent-less kids?

I have two children whom I have tried quite conscientiously to not expose to the more toxic parts of our culture. They have, to my knowledge, never watched any of the sitcoms where some significant fraction of the comedy revolves around parents and other adults complaining about having children/families. None of the standup comedians of that ilk (supposing that's still a part of their schtick). I avoid anything that talks about how "your carbon footprint will be smaller if you just don't have kids". They weren't really aware of the term "overpopulation".

Most of all, I've always talked quite fondly and genuinely of having become a father myself.

And, now, even as teenagers, they seem to look forward to the idea of becoming parents themselves one day.

I don't have a large sample size, and it's hardly scientific, but the biggest problem I think is that our culture revels in how awful parenting is. The act of believing that idea causes people to be incapable of enjoying it. I also suspect rather strongly that it is more than just some arbitrary meme that bounces around in everyone's collective heads, instead the idea itself causes people to fail to enjoy parenting and to avoid it. It becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy, should they fail to achieve lasting childlessness.

Why should such a culture deserve to even survive? Your civilization requires that people continue to reproduce, but shows nothing but contempt for the concept. It shows contempt for itself. All of the very ideals this civilization embraces and exalts seem contrary to reproduction, and no one shows any awareness that that would have to change, let alone interest in making the changes.

rawgabbit2• 3 years ago

That’s the plot of Bladerunner. We bioengineer a slave class with a fixed life span and prevent them from reproducing.

hn_throwaway_994• 3 years ago

I'm really curious how the bioethicist debate around this would work. At some point it feels like you're experimenting on humans without their consent. I guess that can be said about many treatments that are used to make babies (like IVF) or otherwise affect the young, but given the inherent uncertainty that would surround the first couple human babies that would be made using this technique, it does seem like a pretty wide bridge to cross.

justrealist3• 3 years ago

I'll just note that if modern bioethics precautionary principles were applied in the 1970s, we would probably never have gotten human IVF treatments — nobody would have ever gotten the green-light to try it on a person.

As someone who has a family because of IVF, I am very thankful that researchers were allowed to roll the dice on that one, and see that it turned out well.

lo_zamoyski4• 3 years ago

This puts the cart before the horse. If we have very good reason to believe we may be doing something immoral, it behooves us to be cautious.

Also, this is not a question of precaution, but a known objectively gravely immoral act. There is no risk here that we might be doing something wrong using IVF. We know with certainty that IVF is gravely immoral. That we may have obtained some outcome that is desirable does not justify the illicit means. That is, applied to your case, while it is not wrong for your family to exist per se, the means by which they were brought into existence was definitely illicit.

opprobium3• 3 years ago

Mixing two parents genes randomly and then seeing what happens (ie, normal human reproduction) is also experimenting on a future human without their consent.

Applications of ideas around consent to human reproduction are confusing and self-contradictory at the best of times.

anon2918• 3 years ago

Except they're not mixing two parents genes randomly. Moreover, we know for a fact that not receiving male genes or not receiving female genes is problematic (see Angelman and Prader-Willi syndrome... genes must be received from one man and one woman, and women cannot produce male haploid genes and vice versa). In general, the only thing humans have tried is randomly mixing a man and a woman's genes, not two random people.

scohesc• 3 years ago

Will be very _very_ interesting to see if the tech develops enough in my lifetime to where people can send in spit samples to a medical firm, have their genome processed and then the medical company can remove any genetic predispositions to certain defects, etc... You could then also (for a hefty price), choose to have different traits embedded in your embryo - different eye colors, hair types, jawline, etc.

I'm sure we'll eventually get to the point where you can go to a medical company, throw your spit into a machine and be able to check on/off boxes for desired traits, remove negative traits, etc. etc. and have a baby ready for you under accelerated growth in weeks, not months. For added comedy, have it delivered by drone - instead of a stork delivering your child, it could be Amazon!

hutzlibu• 3 years ago

"For added comedy, have it delivered by drone - instead of a stork delivering your child, it could be Amazon! "

Interesting dystopia?

But as far as I understand, the understanding of genetics is changing. Meaning there are no simple flags to set, that will enable or disable certain diseases or traits. It is way more interconnected, so your custom ordered amazon baby might have to wait a little bit longer.

BXlnt2EachOther• 3 years ago

for anyone intrigued and/or frightened by the first half of that, here's a context-sensitive recommendation for the film Gattaca (1997) -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca

cameldrv• 3 years ago

A more limited version of this is already a consumer product [1]. You can't edit the genome, but you can pick the best (for whatever your definition of best is) of the dozen or so embryos. They sequence the whole genome of all of the embryos and give you all sorts of genetic information.

[1] https://www.orchidhealth.com

lo_zamoyski4• 3 years ago

Not a laughing matter, of course. The commodification of human beings is a huge problem, and one we already suffer from, a part of our cultural malaise.

RivieraKid3• 3 years ago

And 50% discount if you just need a particular body part for a transplant.

freitzkriesler22• 3 years ago

Considering Japan has a huge birth rate collapse problem, it doesn't surprise me that they are leading the way for test tube babies.

woah• 3 years ago

Why would that solve anything? I don’t think that anyone has any complaints about the process of conceiving a baby naturally, it’s what happens in the 18 years following

esafak2• 3 years ago

I read that the Japanese aren't even having much recreational sex. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/young-people-j...

almatabata7• 3 years ago

It depends on the reasons why people do not have kids. This technique would allow gay couples to have kids for example which currently they cannot without adoption in the male case.

I wonder as well how many people do not have kids because they simply cannot find a suitable partner. Maybe this will cause a further drop in the rate of marriages and partnerships.

Of course the above solutions will only create a marginal increase but an increase none the same.

I also think that if things get bad enough the government will intervene and create institutions where these kids would get born and educated. A very brave new world scenario but if the technology allows it, i would not put it past governments to solve their problems.

jackbravo• 3 years ago

Government babies? Raised by the state, to serve the state.

yjftsjthsd-h• 3 years ago

Is their birth rate a function of biological fertility problems?

rawgabbit2• 3 years ago

It is a result of a proud tradition bound culture that is at odds with their economic reality.

Most couples are barely scraping by economically. Those who want children are faced with employers who expect their employees ass in seat 12 hours a day six days a week. Childcare is difficult.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/09/10/business/japan-...

dmoy• 3 years ago

No, it is not really the main cause.

But, GP's point could still be true - even if it's not the real underlying cause, it may be still enough to accelerate research in this area.

Barrin92• 3 years ago

for the overwhelming majority the issue is raising a kid, not conceiving one. And given Japan's fairly unique aversion for kids outside marriage (I think it's like 2% compared to 40% in the US or Europe), this is almost completely cultural.

If you're facing the choice of not having kids or being delegated to married housewife a lot of women across East-Asia just choose to not want one. Understandable, really.

throwawayfear3• 3 years ago

Nothing wrong with being a married housewife. It’s callous to write with a connotation that suggests there is. In fact the best argument is that children need and should have their mother around as much as possible especially in their formative years. Children aren’t a status symbol or a car or a pet.

lo_zamoyski4• 3 years ago

Having kids outside marriage is frowned upon in general in any civilization, and marriage correlates strongly with having children. Also a contemptuous view of "housewife" shows a disregard for how demanding motherhood is (or fatherhood is, for that matter). This is a worldwide problem, save maybe for Africa, something we also see in the liberal West. People have just become comfortable and hedonistic. Having children is not comfortable. It is demanding. It requires thinking of someone other than yourself (as does marriage, also affected by this mentality). Given the choice between a nicer house and another child, many today in the West would choose the house. Consumerism, hedonistic views of sex, keeping up with the Joneses, all these contribute to reduced birth rates. Japan is clearly about as demoralized as the West, whatever the precise causes.

gascoigne• 3 years ago

"Men in Japan do fewer hours of housework and child care than in any of the world’s richest nations. That keeps women from getting better jobs and holds back the economy."

Slightly old but relevant piece from the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/02/world/asia/japan-working-...

throwawayfear3• 3 years ago

If they as a culture are no longer willing or able to reproduce, this means they have had their time under the sun. This technology is evil and will lead to immense evil. It is an abomination.

freitzkriesler22• 3 years ago

Agreed

lionelholt• 3 years ago

Considering the gigantic problems of dwindling global resources, climate change, etc, birth rate collapse isn't a problem. It's a solution.

morkalork2• 3 years ago

I never knew there was such an industry surrounding IVF until researching it. It's wild how hush hush and not talked about it is while simultaneously common enough there's a whole medical tourism industry for it. You can have prescriptions sent to you in advance, get picked up by a driver at the airport and stay at an affiliated beach resort. They'll deliver prescriptions to your room so you don't need to go to pharmacy in a foreign country. Hell, some providers even include a working SIM card in the package.

Y_Y2• 3 years ago

There's nothing quiet about it. There's a whole district near where I live dedicated to it, it's covered by my health insurance, I've contracted to an IVF company here to do ML for face matching, many of my friends have used it, it's well enough known that the acronym didn't need to be defined.

syntaxing2• 3 years ago

Pardon my ignorance, but they use ML to find sperm and egg donors that match similar facial features to the “parents”? Cause that is honesty pretty cool.

beremaki• 3 years ago

I've contracted to an IVF company here to do ML for face matching

This is actually a good idea. I have a hard time believing it actually performs well though

NikolaNovak4• 3 years ago

I'm in Canada. It is a bit of an awkward topic, but turns out half of families I know had some sort of fertility treatment. Whether just some pills to help out with hormones or sperm count, or IUI, or IVF. It's covered by provincial insurance and is a medical procedure like any other.

As our fertility challenges increase (from biological issues like decrease in male sperm counts and fertility to social ones like longer student loans, getting together later, and strong emergence of non-cis-hetero families), it seems increasingly a must to preserve a modern society at least in the Interim. But yeah, people don't / didn't talk about it much. A lot of older generations or particularly zealously religious still don't - we like to find exciting ways to taboo and isolate each other :-/.

woodpanel• 3 years ago

Three words: Servants, Drones and Sex-Slaves

I don’t see how this is not going to end in this. What I’m less certain about is whether the Breeded will be the cannon fodder or we‘ll be…

shadowgovt5• 3 years ago

You can't currently create a human being via the old-fashioned method and (legally, in post places) force them to be any of those things.

There's no reason creating a human being via a new method should suddenly flip the rules and allow it.

JoeAltmaier8• 3 years ago

Wha?! Because, religion! They are abominations!

Not really, but in history children born out of wedlock were freely discriminated against, assumed to be subhuman and criminal, and killed without repercussion.

It would be reasonable, extrapolating from (recent) history, to assume artificial humans would instantly be put in that category.

efnx• 3 years ago

We have already had these throughout history without this technology! Humans are humans no matter what they look like or how they got here and we have to treat us all equally and with respect - that’s the solution to those problems.

bryanlarsen2• 3 years ago

None of which will happen at any sort of scale different than it happens today as long as children require a womb, 9 months in the womb, and many years of expensive care to reach an age they can become a useful servant, drone or sex slave.

swfsql• 3 years ago

Japan does have a demographic problem down the road, and the only thing politicians really do care about is that taxes aren't going to get paid by themselves, you need taxpayers for that. So it's Servants from your list.

norwalkbear3• 3 years ago

Utterly horrifying

JoeAltmaier8• 3 years ago

Something a wag wrote when the Pope allowed the rhythm method of birth control: Now you couldn't use chemistry or physics for family planning, but math was ok.

It was a joke, but it was also very true.

Was a time folks assumed fairies planted children in women's stomachs. Nowadays we know better. Lots better: now we can control the process deliberately. To claim any particular advancement in this chain of understanding is an abomination or horrifying, is a terrible temptation to update that joke.

I don't see how any human being is 'horrifying', but I fear there will be those that dehumanize some of us, and call them subhuman or make it a crime for them to be born. Resist this impulse!

norwalkbear3• 3 years ago

I reject your worldview 100% and the false equivalency between previous beliefs about childbirth and this.

It's utterly horrifying because we've seen repeatedly how corporations abuse such things.

RivieraKid3• 3 years ago

...that it's not progressing faster.

iandanforth• 3 years ago

I fully support this line of work. I hope all those behaviors which lead to significant harm are outlawed and all those behaviors that lead to good outcomes are supported. Just like with every other technology in the history of humanity.

adolph• 3 years ago

I hope all those behaviors which lead to significant harm are outlawed and all those behaviors that lead to good outcomes are supported.

It seems very optimistic to think that humans can (a.) perform that at a germ cell level, and (b.) distinguish between moral and evolutionary goods (because they may be at odds) [0]. If the history of dog breeding is any example, quests for some perceived good lead to maladaptive features in other areas.

I’m more sanguine about possibilities in altering expression of somatic cells like what octopuses do [1].

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%...

1. https://news.uchicago.edu/story/octopuses-other-cephalopods-...

almatabata7• 3 years ago

A lot of behaviors can lead to good and bad outcomes. We give guns to policemen to protect citizen. They might also misuse it. We write rules that govern these behaviors to avoid or minimize the bad outcomes.

In this scenario we already have a good idea of what people might do when given the chance if you look at science fiction.

Instead of waiting for the technology to get ready we should really think hard on which aspect of this technology we want to adopt and which ones we want to ban. For example if you can scale this technology by not requiring women wombs, should we allow the government to grow an army of clones? Would these clones have the same right as normal citizen?

We can allow individuals to have kids through this method while banning the government from misusing it (in theory).

throwawayfear3• 3 years ago

This should be banned everywhere.

nonethewiser• 3 years ago

It wont be. China in particular stands out as a place where this will be heavily utilized. There just arent any negative feelings towards this kind of stuff.

RivieraKid3• 3 years ago

How long until rich people start making their own clones for limb / organ / whole body transplantation?

lamontcg2• 3 years ago

IVG would render the biological clock irrelevant, by enabling women of any age to have genetically related children. That raises questions about whether there should be age limits for IVG baby-making.

Yeah, certainly can't let women breed at any age like men do.

Japanese scientists working on creating human eggs and sperm in the lab

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