Scientists Get Closer To Replicating Human Sperm (engadget.com) 224
Rachel England reports via Engadget: Scientists have taken an important step forward in recreating the way the human body makes sperm, which could one day mean creating artificial sperm and eggs for infertility treatment. The researchers, from the University of Cambridge's Gurdon Institute, are thought to be the first team to have reached the "halfway point" -- a significant milestone -- on the path between stem cells and immature sperm. This pathway -- which the team are attempting to track and understand -- involves embryonic cells turning into immature sperm via a series of complex steps known as meiosis. Cells follow the same journey for around eight weeks, before taking different directions depending on whether they're to be sperm or eggs. Previously, the team had managed to track this pathway to the four-week mark. Now, using new technology in the form of miniature artificial testicles (called "gonadal organoids"), it's on track to pass this point and gain new, deep insight into the process of sperm creation. Further reading: The Guardian
Quick! Call the MRA brigade! (Score:2, Funny)
We need the MRA douchebags to come out and march against the elimination of the male sex! Just think....in 50 years a woman can create sperm from her own cells or the cells of a partner and when enough of them do that the male sex will end...........
Re:Quick! Call the MRA brigade! (Score:4, Informative)
No. Men aren't all rape monsters as the worst feminist propaganda claims, but neither are all women man-haters.
Just like men, women are social primates who require social connections with the sex to which they're attracted... and with 90% of the population being heterosexual, men aren't in any danger of being replaced by a lab and a Hitachi wand any time soon.
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"Men aren't all rape monsters as the worst feminist propaganda claims"
Perhaps not. But the #MeToo movement has shown that there are plenty of wealthy, well-connected, educated, successful vindictive horndog scumbags in every industry.
I saw it many times when I waited tables many years ago. Managers treated the female staff as sex slaves. One manager cheated on his pregnant wife by offering choice tables & shifts in exchange for sex. Those who refused got cut early or worked the slow days.
Good thing for
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1) We're not a polygamous species, we generally engage in serial monogamy with a percentage of 'cheaters'. Polygamy results when there is an extreme power distribution issue combined with a cultural view of women as property.
2) 99% of men rate 99% of women as 'unworthy of mating' yet there's a lot more than 1% of the species having sex and/or long term relationships. Just like men, women adjust their standards to their environment (and don't call it 'lowering', because the typical 'standards' are extremel
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However, the procedure is so complex, only a handful of scientists would be able to perform it. So what would really be needed is a way to automate artificial sperm production; let's call it an 'organ'. Going to a special facility that seeds the organ with source cells to create the artificial sperm would be a hassle, so why not embed this organ inside the human body? Not everyone would need these sperm-creating organs, since some would only utilize their eggs; so, only about half of the females would need
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An alternate prediction: both sexes will continue indefinitely, but the differences between them will be significantly attenuated over time. With most of the traditionally sex-linked tasks (brute manual labor, combat, conception, carrying fetuses to term, etc) readily outsourced to machines, a person's sex will become a minor detail, similar in importance to, say, hair-color or eye-color. i.e. mostly a matter of aesthetics, and modifiable without too much difficulty or controversy, if what you were born
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I think it's unlikely but not impossible to imagine some kind of synthetic sperm further altering the male/female dynamic in Western countries where women have a significant amount of economic parity.
It's been hypothesized by many that the increasing economic independence of women has significantly altered the social landscape. Women marry later if at all due to well-paying careers. I even think the whole #metoo movement is something of a byproduct of increasing female financial power and a rejection of h
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ha, in an all out fight between men and women, I wouldn't bet on the women. Or, wake me up when women are winning martial arts tournaments (they won't, ever)
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That's the thing. All out physical combat no longer underscores much of "winning" and "losing" in modern civilizations and women have been gradually gaining the financial independence necessary to remove their dependence on and subservience to men in our new, combat-free environment.
They're actually more similar to female royalty in older monarchies, using wealth and power to get men to perform combat on their behalf, like mercenaries.
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That's good in places where that is true,
however your view of the world is of a subset of western cultures. And those have negative population growth, so those won't endure sad to say.
the positive population growth is among people with more brutish treatment of women. That's whom evolution will favor. The male chauvinist pigs shall inherit the earth.
And when they can replicate the egg.... (Score:2)
Just think... in the future, generations may be born that don't have any ancestors at all.
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So, let me get this straight. Your mom is Jeremy's fathers mitochondrial what? I thought you had his features.
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"Nice Ear's" - Mr. Potato head
Bringing coal to Newcastle (Score:2)
Of all the things humanity doesn't have a shortage of, spermatozoa have got to be right up near the top of the list :)
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Of all the things humanity doesn't have a shortage of, spermatozoa have got to be right up near the top of the list :)
Really. A normal ejaculation has enough live sperm to impregnate every fertile woman on the continent.
Even those with really really bad sperm count, you'll probably never find one that only has one live wriggler, thus requiring it to be cloned.
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In vitro yes.
Via intercourse not so much.
Fertilization is (un?)fortunately not as easy as sperm meets egg.
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In vitro yes.
Via intercourse not so much.
Since we're talking cloning sperm, I would presume that intercourse does not come into play anyhow?
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Even so, the fact that guys who can't procreate naturally are willing to spend large amounts of money on the problem drives research like this. Apparently having children that are genetically related to them is really important.
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Indeed. Males are basically ejaculation machines. If you want to "fix" something with technology that needs fixing, make hornier females.
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Just one question (Score:2)
Are the 'Gonadal Organoids' brass? Do they come (sorry, couldn't resist) in sizes?
Because there aren't enough humans (Score:2)
This is sooooo necessary because 7.5 billion humans infesting this globe is nowhere near enough.
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Well, of course it is. As everybody knows, the 7.5 billion on the planet aren't the right ones.
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And then there were two
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There's plenty of other planets and systems for us to infest yet I bet.
An automated 'seed' ship could grow new humans at the right time to raise and train them before reaching a good looking planet. Assuming the ship-board AI doesn't go Skynet on the way.
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Who cares about the number of people on the planet?
Get rid of CO2 pollution and we have no problem.
I'm tired about idiots throwing the "over population mantra" who live in countries that clearly has no overpopulation.
Hint: most first nations have problems with sustaining their population size, birth rates far below 2.0 kids per couple, or woman. And for some strange reason (actually not so strange if you dig into it) they have the highest rates of infertile men, too.
Why do you want to punish an Japanese or
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Typically, the body eliminates immune cells that see itself as a target. Seems it missed one here.
If you would have bothered to read the article.. (Score:3, Funny)
Half-way Point (Score:2)
I thought someone by now would have posted a joke about only reaching the half-way point.
Re:Half-way Point (Score:4, Funny)
Ok, here it goes:
The North Korean committee to produce butter from shit has reached the halfway point. The taste is still off, but it already spreads pretty well.
"Peak Sperm" shortage of the future averted! (Score:1)
WHY? Did I miss something? (Score:3)
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Exactly my question, but I'll never see a mod point to give you.
Looked like a surprisingly active topic, so I stopped by in my usual futile quest for "Funny" or "Insightful" comments. I guess that means I actually square or cube your "WHY?" Not only 'why do this' but 'why were so many people on Slashdot interested enough to comment on it' (without generating any "Funny" or "Insightful" mods (to date)).
As regards your sig I've heard that Honest Abe is the most frequently used source for bogus quotes. However
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Is there suddenly a world wide shortage of human sperm? This seems the height of waste.
Can you see no value in understanding the process of how sperm is created than to create sperm?
We are being replaced guys! (Score:2)
I knew it, I JUST knew it!
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I knew it, I JUST knew it!
Honestly, I'm all for it. The women who want to get pregnant in this way, go right ahead. No child support that way.
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they'll steal cells from you, impregnate themselves with derived sperm, and then get your money
Every sperm is sacred... (Score:2)
When a sperm is created
God gets quite irate
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FTFY
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Yes. First, two wrongs don't make a right. Second, sweeping generalisations are always wrong.
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+10 Ironic!!!!
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They aren't even tolerant of each other. Maybe they could start by agreeing on what the exact definition of a woman is.
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Tolerance of intolerance is fundamentally implied to not being apart of the meaning. So if someone is being an intolerant and sexist jerk, being opposed to that is not generally considered intolerant. For instance, I'm a very tolerant male feminist (as it falls under egalitarian), but I passively or actively oppose inequality, including gender inequality.
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Most of the women I know prefer the old fashioned way too. I'm not worried.
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"Well, time to hit the hay... oh I forgot, I ate it!" - Mr. Ed
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You obviously haven't met my wife.
When you think with the wrong head, you reap what you sow.
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Most of the women I know prefer the old fashioned way too. I'm not worried.
youll be surprised how hard the door hits you on your way out when theres a more attractive alternative present
I think you were responding to the more attractive alternative.
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Please, let them. Playing God with the procreation process is usually a civilization destroying process.
*usually* a civilization destroying process ? (Score:3)
Playing God with the procreation process is usually a civilization destroying process.
What do you mean by "usually" ?
You have a long list of civilisations all destroyed by the process of "Playing God" with the procreation process ?
Like a dozen of such cases, to illustrate that indeed that's the most usual out-come ?
The only instance of "Playing God with the procreation process" is the development of agriculture over the past couple of millennia (hybridizations, selections of weird nearly-impossible offsprings, agricultural crops being so much different from their nearest natural wild relativ
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You're kidding, right? Nevermind modern birth control, synthetic hormones, IVF etc, non-procreative sex has been around since before primates waddled around upright. No civilizations destroyed.
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Please, let them. Playing God with the procreation process is usually a civilization destroying process.
Really now? Can you present evidence for this claim? Do you have evidence for the following:
1) There has existed a civilization that advanced science to the point that they could artificially reproduce outside of normal biological processes (assuming that they reproduced sexually)
2) That this scientific advancement destroyed their civilization?
Take your religious mysticism and FUD and go home.
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Men are in trouble if this succeeds. Feminists are not all welcoming, open, forgiving or tolerant ;) lol
Good thing that at best, third wave feminists represent about 10% of women. They're quite a minority and the majority of women disagree with them. If you're really that concerned, don't live in one of the far left states. Personally, I'd never live in a locale where third wave feminists and SJW's are elevated in social status. They're just annoying. Three types of people I can't stand: Third Wave Feminists, SJW's and Bible Thumpers. Do your homework on which state to live in and relocate accordingly a
Hey guys - game over! (Score:2)
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Hush. Let the genders think they have edged out each other for once. It's fun to watch.
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Men will destroy the world before they allow sperm to be made in a lab. Nothing is so fragile as the male ego.
Your ego[1], certainly. Mine is just fine, you can tell by how little self-loathing I exhibit.
[1] Assuming you identify as a man. Don't want to trigger you, after all.
Note: Feminism ends a couple of milliseconds after the first nukes hit the ground.
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So now what are the chicks going to do when there's a spider in the bathtub?
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Wrong. It will be produced in a lab. It will be delivered in convenient "to go" boxes.
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Just that tape of the man himself, bragging about it... Dipshit.
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So how many people did Trump kill when standing out on the street with a gun? Because he bragged about being able to do that too.
Face it. Trump has been nothing but lies for a long time. Him saying something is no more proof that he did it than some random whackjob claiming to be the son of God actually being the son of God.
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And still we pray to him 2000 years later.
All you really need is a good PR machine, reality or truth are secondary.
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So how many people did Trump kill when standing out on the street with a gun? Because he bragged about being able to do that too.
Just how stupid are you? He didn't say he had killed anyone. He bragged that he could. He said he had grabbed women. Sounds like a confession to me. With a witness. On tape. Would it stand up in court. Would a jury convict? Deity knows there are plenty of people in prison that a jury convicted. Did they all actually commit the crime for which they were convicted.
And thus the question is answered. You're pretty goddamn stupid if you're arguing that Twitler didn't grab anyone by the pussy.
Face it. Trump has been nothing but lies for a long time. Him saying something is no more proof that he did it than some random whackjob claiming to be the son of God actually being the son of God.
Good that you at le
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I take the garbage out.
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It's only a matter of time.
Besides sperm, we serve no purpose.
By that logic, women will serve no purpose either, given artificially created eggs (which the article suggests they are just as close to replicating as sperm) and an artificial womb [theverge.com], which is much further along.
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The key difference is this: the way X and Y chromosomes work, some of the children artificially produced from two men will be girls (and some---those with two Y chromosomes that survive---will be homicidal maniacs). But none of the children artificially produced from two women will be boys.
So, yes, I agree with OP. This could make men obsolete---but it won't quite ever make women obsolete.
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I think it's the other way around. Men's genetic material can clone both boys and girls without a woman, because men have both X and Y chromosomes. Eradicate the Y and duplicate the X, and you get a female.
But a woman can never clone a boy from her own genetic material.
Similar for gay couples - once technology allows it, two men can sire both boys and girls from their combined DNA, but two women can only ever have girls. Given that more women want boys than girls, men will still be needed as donors.
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Let me rephrase it: you will never get the "woman" out of men---no matter how technologically advanced, our society will always have women; that's literally in our DNA. But you can get the "man" out of society. Barring some unforeseen catastrophe (the stuff of sci-fi), it is possible to have a technologically advanced society that only has women and no men anywhere---the structure of human DNA allows for that.
You are presuming that men are somehow necessary (so the ability to produce a boy is a good thing).
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But eliminating women takes the artificialness of the approach to the next level. Either you have to eliminate all X-chromosome-carrying sperms (and I guess somehow you made sure your artificial eggs only carried X chromosome, unless it's somehow O.K. for an artificial egg to have Y chromosome), or you perform sex-selective abortions where all girls are killed at early age. All these are active measures that need to be taken to keep eliminating women from each generation. In any generation you stop taking t
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Houston, Houston, Do You Read?
(by James Tiptree, Jr. - btw, a woman who used a man's name as a pseudonym, in order to get published)
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I think it depends also a lot on the hormones.
So with enough artificial testosterone even a XX whole "female" embryo should develop to a male. Not 100% sure. Definitely a "male" XY embryo will develop to a most of the time fertile woman.
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It's only a matter of time.
Besides sperm, we serve no purpose.
By that logic, women will serve no purpose either, given artificially created eggs (which the article suggests they are just as close to replicating as sperm) and an artificial womb [theverge.com], which is much further along.
Of course women will still serve a purpose! How else will the dishes and laundry get done? /s
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Wait. You define your existence by your ability to serve up sperm?
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Ah, have you ever observed where a certain type of women gets their spending money from? Sure, "feminists" want men to pay for that without any compensation in the form of, say, sex or bearing children, but men are very much needed as work-slaves for these women.
With apologies to all women that do work to earn their living and that, unlike "feminists", do support equality.
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Re:open a box of chocolates (Score:5, Funny)
It would all go terribly wrong when there were no more men, and women realized they had nobody to blame for their failures.
Re:open a box of chocolates (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, for instance?
Here's the thing: everything you've ever heard about feminists is true... of some feminist somewhere. It's also false. Just like everything you've ever heard about Trump voters is true ... of some Trump voter somewhere. It's also false.
Some mens-rights advocates have, in response to the whole sexual harassment thing, pointed out that women sometimes sexually harass men too. They were roundly mocked by feminists, but it turns out those mens-rights types have a surprising ally in their point of view: other feminists. The jargon those feminists use might sound foreign (essentialism) but they're making exactly the same point: being a woman shouldn't automatically make you a victim and being a man shouldn't automatically make you a victimizer.
That's because any large group of people (like "all men" or "all women") is bound to have people who aren't very much alike. That's even true of people who identify with some kind of ideological label like "conservative" or "environmentalist". If there's enough of them it's always easy to cherry pick viewpoints to suit your purpose.
People across the political spectrum love them their stereotypes and straw men, because it makes it easy to feel like you're right all the time. But this violates the most basic principle of civilized behavior: the golden rule. That's not how you want your views to be treated.
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False equivalency. Oh, sure, rape of a man is equally bad as rape of a woman, but on a societal scale rape of women is much worse than rape of men because it's much, much more common. Women are raped far more often than men, so it makes sense to focus primarily on female rape. And, actually, there's every reason to expect that putting a lot of effort into addressing rape in general will help reduce both male and female rape, even if nearly all of the effort is applied to the largest part of the problem (fem
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That's what everyone would worry about, until it actually happens and they realize that men were really the source of all the societal problems.
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What a disgusting statement.
Re:open a box of chocolates (Score:5, Funny)
It's pretty obvious you haven't met my ex.
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you haven't met my ex
I was pretty sure you have an "ex".
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It's pretty obvious you haven't met my ex.
And you picked her. Every man that has had this experience needs to read up on psychology especially Histrionic Personality Disorder [wikipedia.org]. No matter how tantalizing and mesmerizing they are, RUN AWAY!
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Actually, it was only one part of me that picked her. Unfortunately, it was getting about 90% of my blood supply at the time, leaving my brain starved for oxygen.
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Holy crappe!!!
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I lie awake at night worrying that a vibrator and a jar lid wrench is all you need to replace men.
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I hear such a process is happening in Japan. Women deciding they don't need men in their lives.
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This is more of a Science win (Why did we do it? Because we could!) being dressed up in FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt). The scientists involved did it because it sounded need (make germ cells from proto-germ cells? has anyone done this? why not?), probably tacked on with some "for the people reasoning" to get the necessary funding ("Umm, it could eventually allow couples lacking reproductive organs to reproduce?? At some point, several decades in the future, after many more grants...plz...").
Anyway, since
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"neat" not "need"
And we can't cure cancer or AIDS, let alone create designer babies. We have nothing to fear. Unless it's idiots in backwoods garages offering 'super-baby' sperm which at best will be regular sperm, at worst someone playing mad gene splicer with human sperm (with predictably bad side effects).
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If we have a nuclear war, there might be.
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If we have a nuclear war, it's more likely you find a functioning male than a functioning lab.
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I'll make my own thanks. It's a lot more fun.
Actually the fun is all in the dispensing. You're making sperm all the time.