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Science Technology

Scientists Take Step Toward Creating Artificial Embryos (reuters.com) 118

Posted by msmash from the marching-forward dept.
An international team of scientists has moved closer to creating artificial embryos after using mouse stem cells to make structures capable of taking a crucial step in the development of life. From a report: Experts said the results suggested human embryos could be created in a similar way in future -- a step that would allow scientists to use artificial embryos rather than real ones to research the very earliest stages of human development. The team, led by Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, a professor at Britain's Cambridge University, had previously created a simpler structure resembling a mouse embryo in a lab dish. That work involved two types of stem cells and a three-dimensional scaffold on which they could grow. But in new work published on Monday in the journal Nature Cell Biology, the scientists developed the structures further -- using three types of stem cells -- enabling a process called gastrulation, an essential step in which embryonic cells begin self-organizing into a correct structure for an embryo to form.
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Scientists Take Step Toward Creating Artificial Embryos More

Scientists Take Step Toward Creating Artificial Embryos

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  • We should be playing God! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Monday July 23, 2018 @12:15PM (#56994882)

    Since some coward has mod points and felt the need to post as AC and mod his own posts up just to say we "shouldn't be playing God," I felt it was only right to balance this by claiming we should be playing God.

    Science is all about learning how the world works and testing it if you can. If you think science is playing God then you should go back to the jungle with the other monkeys.

    • Science is all about learning how the world works and testing it if you can.

      Not that AC you're referring to, but there's this: Scientists come up with all sorts of interesting discoveries and developments and think nothing of it. But then two different types of asshole get wind of whatever it is science has come up with; one of them thinks "I wonder how much money I can make off that?", and the other thinks "I wonder what sort of awesome weapon of war I can use that for?". That's when shit starts going horribly, horribly wrong, because the first guy creates and markets some product

      • one of them thinks "I wonder how much money I can make off that?"

        You have to fund the research (and later production) somehow. Scientists and equipment makers do, after all, need to eat. Most corporate profits aren't egregious, but there are a few who maintain long-term high profit margins and need ... addressing.

        "I wonder what sort of awesome weapon of war I can use that for?"

        Unfortunately, while competition tends to squeeze out those high profit margins as research matures into cheap, consumer-grade technology, weapons of war just keep getting worse.

        You have two excellent tools against war: democracy and a strong interdepend

      • You're right, bro, warfare was so much better back when we were carpet bombing cities rather than using GPS guided bombs to take out precise targets. Damn those military scienticians!

    • Females can be quite unpredictable, what if they were to all go on a sex strike or something. Lol Or just unable to have children... who knows.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Science is all about learning how the world works and testing it if you can. If you think science is playing God then you should go back to the jungle with the other monkeys.

      The same reasoning was made by people that were testing eugenics. Some of them even referred to people they believed to be inferior as monkeys, but they were being a little more literal.

  • Talk about playing God (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Its rather factual now that human's have become God like beings created life artificially and eventually this leads to people losing the wonder of life as we know it. But I think most scientist never believed creation was anything that couldn't eventually be duplicated by science. Its one of those question just because we can doesn't mean we should.

  • this doesn't solve any moral dilemmas (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Monday July 23, 2018 @12:18PM (#56994904) Journal
    This doesn't solve any moral dilemmas. If you can induce human embryos to come about then those are still human.

    • Re:this doesn't solve any moral dilemmas (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Monday July 23, 2018 @12:45PM (#56995080) Journal
      Did you not ever watch the Blade Runner movies? Replicants were obviously based on human DNA, but even if our biotechnology isn't at the level where we can create Replicants, we already have corporations that patent DNA sequences, even if they're naturally occurring, and GMO foods are most certainly patented and copyrighted, so how is it any stretch of the imagination at all that some company could take stock human genes, tweak them in specific ways, patent and copyright them, and since they're not 'born of woman', call them a 'product' and since they're sufficiently different genetically from humans, say they're 'not human beings'? Granted it would be the Supreme Court ruling of the millennia, but it's theoretically possible if our biotech reaches the level where we can do that. Note we're already at the level where 'designer babies' to one extent or another are possible, and it's just mere laws and ethics that are preventing it from happening (assuming that somewhere in China, for instance, it's not already happening).
  • It will be interesting to see how this will affect choice rights. Is this considered conception, if so, at what point?

  • All we have to do now is combine this with artificial wombs [scientificamerican.com] and automate the whole thing in seed ships spreading humanity to neighboring stars...

    The only question is who raises the newborns in the seed ship. How many adults do we need to have around? Perhaps a generational with only half a dozen people at any given time but that can spawn thousands once it arrives at the chosen destination.

    I can't be the first to think of this concept. Can anyone recommend a sci-fi novel that describes a similar idea?

    • I can't be the first to think of this concept. Can anyone recommend a sci-fi novel that describes a similar idea?

      The Songs of Distant Earth, by Arthur C Clarke. It's probably one of the better known ones.

      A more recent one would be Seveneves, by Neil Stephenson. Haven't read it myself yet, but I've heard good things.

      There are a bunch of books probing the subject, but my personal favourite is probably Voyage From Yesteryear, by James P Hogan. It involves humans from earth arriving at a remote colony which was established by the kind of seed ships you describe but with zero human crew; the embryos were gestated and ra

    • Assemblers of Infinity, by Kevin J Anderson and Doug Beason, touch on the subject very briefly. Their story passes on a colony ship though for a rather more interesting method.

  • A team lead by Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz ...

    How ironic, in so many ways, that someone named after Mary Magdelene would lead a team creating the initial phase of artificial humans. Philosophy students and scholars are going to be busy with that.

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