posted on July 10, 2001 09:18:03 PM new
Did he really say that Zilvy?
This sounds like a joke, but it's completely true. They expect to start experimenting on humans within the next year. (They're only at the mice-stage now.)
How emasculating, eh?
Sorry to be so blunt James. That was the only word I could think of to call "them".
[ edited by kraftdinner on Jul 10, 2001 09:20 PM ]
posted on July 10, 2001 10:22:35 PM new
James, I don't think that it specifically is cloning. It could be, but does not necessarily need to be. A female "donor" could have her DNA artificially inserted into the egg to fertilize it. Cloning would mean that the egg's DNA would have been neutralized, but I do not think that is what kraftdinner meant.
"Do you realize what this means???"
Sure! It means that we no longer have to hear the demeaning statement from some people that "men are only good for one thing," meaning a DNA donation.
posted on July 11, 2001 03:45:44 AM new
I am disappointed - I thought it was spam also and an advance we really need.
Perhaps a few people will need this such as Barbarasgirl - but overall the world seems more than spectacularly successful keeping the population up with the old methods.
posted on July 11, 2001 10:46:49 AM new
New technique could make fathers unnecessary
By Judy Siegel July, 11 2001
JERUSALEM (July 11) - Children could be born to two biological mothers without the need of a father if a technique developed by separate teams - each of them headed by Israeli scientists permanently living abroad - is applied successfully to human beings. The technique has significant advantages over cloning an embryo from a single mother.
Dr. Orly Lacham-Kaplan, a cell biologist sent by the Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Campus to study assisted reproductive techniques at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, nearly a decade ago and who settled there, presented her findings at meetings of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Lausanne, Switzerland, earlier this month. She found a way to fertilize mouse eggs using genetic material from any cell in the body - and not just sperm.
Lacham-Kaplan rejected the idea that the new technique would actually made fathers redundant, even though the media are focusing on this aspect.
"This technique would actually allow for male patients who are unable to father their own biological children to actually achieve this goal in life," Lacham-Kaplan told The Jerusalem Post last night.
"Theoretically, women can actually have children without men, so men are redundant, but that's all in theory," she added, quipping: "My personal view is that we don't have to give up men yet. They're still very useful for us women."
The technique could potentially help infertile couples to have children and, at least theoretically, could make it possible for lesbian couples to have their own baby girl - genetically related to both - without donated sperm. Since females lack Y chromosomes, they could not produce a boy on their own.
Lacham-Kaplan headed the team that took body cells from a female to produce the embryo. She told the BBC that they successfully fertilized mice eggs in lab cultures without sperm. Until now this has been impossible, because body cells contain two sets of chromosomes, while sperm cells contain only one set.
The Monash team used chemical techniques to eliminate the extra set of chromosomes. However, it will not know if the embryos are viable until they transfer them to surrogate mothers for further development.
Lacham-Kaplan, who originally developed the technique to help infertile men lacking sperm cells, mimicked the process that takes place during normal fertilization when two sets of chromosomes in an egg are separated and one is ejected, leaving the remaining set to combine with the single set from the sperm.
"We will have to wait to see if any live and healthy babies are born following those transfers," she told the BBC. "Within the next six to eight months, I believe we will have the answer and see whether this technology can go further and be used maybe in clinical aspects. Theoretically, we can use somatic cells from a female to produce the same embryo. So two women who wish to have their own biological children would be able maybe to use this technology to achieve that aim."
However, this could prove problematic as various aspects of development are controlled by a paternal gene.
Dr. Ze'ev Rosenwaks, an Israeli who has become a US leader in assisted reproductive techniques, presented a lecture to the same medical conference on his team's work, which achieved the same result with certain variations.
Rosenwaks used a similar process, but on human egg cells. He separated the chromosomes and prepared them for fertilization, but did not produce human embyros.
Prof. Benny Fisch, head of the Rabin Medical Center's in-vitro fertilization unit, who attended the conference, said the two scientists apparently were not aware of the other's discovery. Neither has published their findings yet.
"This is preliminary work, and there is no evidence yet that the embryos, which are composed of only a couple of cells, can be implanted in a uterus and develop.
The technique could theoretically be used to produce a fetus from two females or a male and female, but of course there are ethical issues involved," he said.
"This is actually genuinely revolutionary and potentially very important," fertility expert Sir Robert Winston told the BBC. "The real advantage of this technique is for men who cannot produce sperm. Hitherto it has always been said they could clone themselves. The beauty of this technique is that it makes cloning completely unnecessary. This actually is a much better technique and ethically much more acceptable because you have chromosomes from two partners."
Dolly the sheep was cloned about three years ago in Scotland from a single mother's cell, but she has shown signs of speeded up aging.
Winston added that it was theoretically possible for a person to reproduce herself using the technique. However, the use of chromosomes from the same person greatly increases the risk that a baby would suffer from genetic defects.
Prof. Neri Laufer, head of the obstetrics department at Hadassah-University Hospital in Jerusalem's Ein Kerem, said last night that he was familiar with the idea but had not read Lacham-Kaplan's paper on her success in mouse embryos. However, he called it "a biologically revolutionary idea."
posted on July 11, 2001 10:21:38 PM new
It would be a great boon for men as well. Think about it. How many women come on to men only to get pregnant and then split? I've had no less than a half-dozen women tellme outright that all that they wanted from me was gene therapy on an egg of theirs (I always declined). How many men end up finding out about a child being born after the split-up, only to discover that all that the mother wanted was a cheap way to get herself into a one-parent family situation? Eventually, I hope that it will be so cheap to do this thinkg and so easy, that men need not get cheated out of the choice of having a family or not. Yah, I know -- wear a rubber and make sure she doesn't put it on you (sometimes holes get mysteriously poked into a rubber as its being helped onto you).
Well, that helps out female-female relationships. How about men who want kids but are still stuck with finding a female to carry it out with? What if a man only wants to be a dad and to be that single-parent father?
posted on July 12, 2001 12:13:17 PM new
[i]"I've had no less than a half-dozen women tellme outright that all that they wanted
from me was gene therapy on an egg of theirs (I always declined)."[/i]
posted on July 12, 2001 06:36:26 PM new"I've had no less than a half-dozen women tellme outright that all that they wanted from me was gene therapy on an egg of theirs (I always declined)."
I can't stop laughing Borillar.......
Really? I thought it was a terrible idea and I still do I firmly believe in the Mother-Father roles in a child's developement. I strongly disagreed and still do disagree with the notion that a woman can provide a child with everything that a father can give. I believe that both mother and father have certain biological, instinctual traits that are passed along to a child to promote a balanced developement. Maybe that's not a popular notion with you, and it certainly got me a lot of heat from many feminists at the time, but I am just as convinced of the notin then as I do now. Personally, I was awfully insulted, rather than flattered.
posted on July 12, 2001 07:25:44 PM new
uaru - Develop a lawn that doesn't need maintenance and then the male species has a worry.
That is no joke!!!
The first company that engineers a grass that grows an inch or inch and a half and stops without bolting will make a HUGE fortune.
We are talking about a multi billion dollar industry to make your yard look like you live in the british isles and keep sheep.
The first hint I get that someone is even trying I will put about a third of our investment fund into it.
posted on July 12, 2001 08:36:58 PM new
Borillar, I wasn't laughing at you, I was laughing at the thought of a guy being approached for that in the first place. I thought that was hilarious! Were these good friends or just acquaintances? How did they put it when they asked you?
It seems like it's almost "in vogue" to be a single parent nowadays, but I can't imagine a woman being so cavalier about a decision like this.
posted on July 12, 2001 10:49:48 PM new
Who were these women? Strangers, that's who. I had my son one weekend when he was two years old and I went next door to visit a gal-pal of mine for a few minutes. She had a friend over there whom I'd never met before. My son and I went outside so I could smoke a cigarette (I smoked back then) and a few minutes later, my gal friend came out and said, "I don't know how to tell you this, but my girl friend saw how cute and adorable your son is and wants yo to get her pregnant." My answer was NO! My friend took the message back inside then came back out, more insistent. I explained that I did not believe that a child's best interests were being served if the child would be without a father, and any child I fathered, I wanted to be a part of his or her life. To make a long story short, the invitation was left open to me should I ever change my mind.
Another time was when I went back to college, a local community college to brush up on my chosen profession. I was approached by a female student who wanted to get to know me better. Of course, she was about ten years my junior. So we had lunch, where I interviewed her. Turned out that her long-range plan was for me to impregnate her and she could leave college and become a single mother.
I mention my son, but only because his mother also wanted the same thing and was furious when I pursued paternity rights (and obligations). All she wanted was a donation from me as well, but had enshrouded it in romance, which I am a sucker for. As soon as she was confirmed pregnant, she dropped me like a hot potato and I was less than the dirt beneath her feet, as in, "What are YOU still doing around here?"
I've had other women do the same thing, and I've had women who were complete strangers come up to me and ask me to impregnate them. I suppose it was because in my twenties an thirties, I looked like a double for Tom Selleck -- without the curls. (These days, being handicapped has made me overweight).
Strange. Only women who do not want kids have wanted to stick with me and women who do want kids only want a small part of me to remember me by. So if I seem a bit cynical about love and family life, perhaps you'll overlook a tirade or two of mine from time to time.
posted on July 13, 2001 05:38:50 AM new
People will ask anything for their own selfish reasons. I help around the house cooking and cleaning so a neighbor lady asked the loan of me from my wife for a few months after she had the baby she was carrying to help her around the house - as if it were my wife's right and dicision to tell me what to do that way. All without any of the pleasure
or pride of helping make the kid.
We are put here as a convienience in whatever form it is needed- didn't you know that?
That's why strangers are also expected to change tires and rescue cats.
They used to have White and Colored drinking fountains but you notice they still have male and female restrooms?
posted on July 13, 2001 12:09:15 PM new"That's because men leave the seat up."
And that's only because home builders do not put in accommodations for men, expecting them to use equiptment not meant for male unination. Every home's bathroom should either have a men's uninal or train the females to put the seat back in the up-right postiion when they're through with them.
posted on July 13, 2001 06:32:16 PM new
What are you trying to do start a war?
Sure you are right but they will kick the crap out of us and make the Feds regulate three flush toilets with bolted down seats.
