A genetics professor explains why new human reproductive technologies could revolutionize the way we look at sex — which will soon be “useless” from the point of view of the continuation of the species.
People will continue to have sex for years to come, but for different reasons: simply they won’t do it so much to make babies. This is what the genetics expert explains Henry Greely that .
This is not to say that making babies will become obsolete, but rather that technology will change the way we do. There may be a much safer, easier way to reproduce — and sex as we know it may be over.
The radical change will be in vitro gametogenesis (IVG) — that is, transform skin cells into induced pluripotent stem cells and then transform them into eggs and sperm. IVG is tremendously exciting for millions of couples, but it raises some complicated questions, explains the Stanford University professor.
For example, if we could produce eggs from skin cells90-year-olds could become genetic parents. The same would happen with cchildren, aborted fetuses or dead people years ago, but whose cells were frozen.
But there are other technologies that could end reproduction as we know it.
In particular, it is possible to modify the DNA of an embryo. THE targeted editing of specific sequences in a cell’s DNA made possible by a revolutionary tool, invented in 2012, that targets DNA sequences CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats). No fundo, o DNA is modified.
In November 2018, Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced the birth of two girls whose embryos had been altered using the CRISPR technique earlier that year. But the investigator did this work in secret, in a way that violated both the ethics of human investigation and Chinese law. A Chinese court sentenced him to three years in prisonsays the scientist.
But this “editing” of DNA may allow the prevention of diseases or disabling conditions in children. But, on the other hand, and raising this modification to a maximum exponent, create “super babies” who would not only have superior abilities, as well as transmitting them to your descendants, can be dangerous. There are those who believe that we should never be allowed to alter the DNA of our descendants.
Another technology that could make sex for reproduction even more redundant is development of artificial wombs. More than 90 years ago, in the book Brave New World by Aldous Huxley were already anticipated “incubators” in which human fetuses would develop in bottles.
In 2017, researchers reported having kept alive neonatal lambs born one or two weeks early in plastic bags filled with liquid. Most recently, the US Food and Drug Administration held a public meeting to consider whether, when and how to conduct trials of these artificial wombs in babies.
A great advantage of this technology is the possibility of helping to save very premature births.
But these technologies are difficult to test, and this has to be done very carefully, as babies’ lives can be put at risk. Thus, “tWe need to emphasize their well-being first, and then the wider effects on our societies“, writes the scientist, but the path to artificial reproduction cannot be stagnant, and that is where the future lies.
So what about sex? Good, “sex, as we know it, could end“, says Greely. But we are human and therefore we will find it in him.
