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Published online 16 July 2008 | Nature 454, 260-262 (2008) | doi:10.1038/454260a
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Making babies: the next 30 years
Louise Brown, the first test-tube baby, was born 30 years ago this month after being conceived outside the body using in vitro fertilization (IVF). Helen Pearson asks what developments in reproductive medicine could have an equivalent impact in the next three decades.
Davor Solter, developmental biologist at the Institute of Medical Biology (IMB) in Singapore
The goals will remain the same in that we'll be trying to give children to those who can't have them and remove children from those who don't want them (see 'Looking back'). I think IVF has gone about as far as it can.
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If this trend is not scary, what else is? IVF is already 30 years old, growing healthier, more successful and more popular. It provides the best mean of having a child especially by working couples in big cities who delay their marriage or are childless. If human embryos can be made from skin cells and grown in culture (thus devoid of moral issues), people can have any number of children at any age. Unfortunately, only those specialists who possess the knowledge, the know-how, and the technology will have the full control of the process; others will be subjected to their whims and idiosyncrasies. And precisely, this is the threatening part. If a few power crazy experts decide to monopolize the special skills and determine to create thousands of children on their own terms and conditions, the world could be in trouble. I would not want to imagine the consequences. Would you? (Tan Boon Tee)
Embryonic research as Davor Solter expects it will not be tolerated by the non scientific community, nor by most scientists for the next 30 years. It still implicates the "frankenstein" picture, ignoring the possible beneficial aspects of this research area.
I truly don't share the enthusiasm of scientists presented in the article. For me it's rather scary picture of future where fertility may be the subject of governmental concessions and regulations more then priceless treasure of human couple. I think that's not the very first time when we hear the bell ringing to stop. But maybe it's the very last time we still can stop...
I agree. It is scary. And i do not want to have a mother who is a hundred years old. Or a father. This is not the earth i want to live in.
Humans can use natural resources to improve our lives but I think this has gone too far. We are so keen on improving science investigation that we have lost sense of reality: we can improve nature but not oppose it. Nature is wise and it knows 60-year-old person shouldn't have baby children, it knows that a mother is important for a baby during pregnacy and it knows is better for evolution genetic variability. I think most of these experiments make people less free because, why do not young partners have children? becase if a woman gets pregnant she'll probably loose her job. Why do they want to experiment with embrios stem cells? becase they want some profit for all the frozen embrios of IVF. I would recommend to read "Brave New World" from Aldous Huxley so that you would understand my opinion
Marina G, in the U.S., it is not legal to fire someone for getting pregnant. It violates our anti-discrimination laws. While some of the ideas mentioned in this article are disturbing (Newborns having children? I don't think we should go there.) that doesn't mean that they are wrong. Most of this is just speculation anyway. Yes, we should try to imagine what the drawbacks of an artifical womb might be, but remember, people thought that heart transplants were creepy once, too. For example, the fear that people having abortions might be required to put them in pre-natal incubators assumes that 1. such incubators would be invented 2. that such a law could be passed in the U.S. A woman's right to choose is closely defended on the economic side as well as the legal side. Anything that makes abortion more expensive or harder to get has to get past the activists, the lobbyists and the lawmakers themselves. The anti-abortion side is just as vigilant. We might have a million more babies? Yes, it's possible. What we don't know is what the world will be like by the time that happens. Who knows, we might have all blown ourselves up by then.
Agreeing with Marina I disagree with Diana. While arguing that some ideas are disturbing I must assert that the sole fact that this ideas are stated creat for them a possibility. Take Davors' tone: "Next I expect that...". This is really to scary anyone. And, yes, I know that the technics for that already exist thus I'm not scary because I do not understand the technics. Yes, something non-ethical today might turn ethical in near future. However there must be some limit for this which I couldn't found in some of the articles. Who will decide if someone can or can't be born without mother? Who will claim such wrigth? Next, think about desingning a persons genome, as Susannah pointed in her article. While pointing there are no data to support the idea, the "genome designer" idea itself is capable to be understood by someone reading the article. Again, this is scary. Some ideas on the articles are beyond the scary, bordering de-humanization. To mention are human clonning and tissue donation. As if the human parts market in some places in this world didn't required our attentions. Finally, what are we looking for when presenting this idea? Perfection? I can use Susannahs' comments again: there are no perfection on us. And exactly this is what makes the human existence perfect giving us a path to follow. Why do we not search perfection in eliminating hungher on Earth, or counteracting the global warming?
This article solely represents certain possibilities that may or may not be obtainable within the next 30 years. While I think that it is of great importance to discuss such possibilities I don't think it is wise to start condemning what has yet to happen as "scary" or immoral. Frankly, if all the things mentioned in this article were to come to fruition, then there would be benefits as well as draw backs. Mr. Jacomel brought up the issue of someone being born without a mother, however is that really any different that being born without a father. Sperm donations and the (for all intense purposes) fatherless children that result have become accepted by society. Is it really so difficult to imagine the reverse? Additionally, although I am extremely confident that designing the genome of your child is much further than 30 years away, would it really be so horrible? PGD has already allowed IVF professionals to select embryos free of certain harmful mutations and as the genetic causes of more diseases are elucidated the practice is sure to become more common. I also have enough faith in my fellow man to think that such trivial things as hair color, eye color or any other "cosmetic" trait would be of little concern to them if and when PGD become wide spread. Similarly, as was mentioned in the article, such traits are influenced by many different genetic loci and would require and extremely detailed understanding of each genes varying affects on the phenotype. Finally, I personally don't think that we as a culture should get to worked up about the idea of cloning humans for "spare parts." Such a thing is not practical simply because by the time you decided you required a certain organ you would have to wait quite sometime for that clone of yours to develop into a mature enough adult in order to harvest the organs. Additionally, it would probably far simpler to grow whatever organ you needed in some sort of other animal, say a pig, which would be made using a iPS cell from you so that it would be a chimera and thus would reduce if not eliminate the chances of rejection. Remember to take all these speculations with a grain of salt, after all some scientists who worked on the Manhattan project were concerned that the detention of the first atomic bomb would cause the atmosphere to catch fire.
I do not see germ cells derived from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells being used to make babies or the cloning being used to mass produce babies anytime soon. There is a very basic biology that remains to be overcome before any of that happens. From cloning experiments with animals we know that cloned animals are defective, for the simple reason that the DNA used is from non-gamete cells (somatic cells). This DNA gets corrupted with age during the process of duplication. When we learn to correct and reprogram our DNA then we will have conquered ageing and disease and the problem of infertility would also disappear and all these proposed technologies would become obsolete.
The next frontier needs to be making BETTER babies. The rate of preterm birth is 12% and rising; pre-eclampsia affects up to 5% of births; obesity in pregnancy is on the rise; and intrauterine growth retardation is still a problem in some pregnancies. These conditions, except possibly obesity, are increased in pregnancies that are the result of IVF, and often result in serious long term effects on physical and cogitive development. For the sake of the children, this is where our research investments need to go now. Margaret C. Neville, PhD. Professor of Basic Reproductive Science Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology University of Colorado Denver, School of Medicine
While I admit it is in the best interest of the patients involved to have a kid, plainly speaking aren't we acting against "survival of the fittest"? Further, if nature (mother nature) wanted us to reproduce at the age of 100, it would have made it so. That nature imposed a reproductive age limit of ~45 for women should ring a bell. Maybe the natural fitness curve of humans fall after 45. I am not taking sides in this issue, but there have been several instances where even scientists, especially scientists have been immensely myopic. We need to understand human physiology and aging properly before we embark on such an adventure, so that the world doesn't end up with a whole generation of weak gene pool.
Is this a new business- Baby production without having two parents, at ANY age? If poor quality of production, then what about the 'living' production? Do we really care? It is filled with new possibilities but most of them are NOT approved by Nature. Is not it? This one really looks unwise to me. Above all, who will be responsible if anything seriously goes wrong? We are already fighting against 'Global warming' (consequence of our own mistakes) and the above seems almost near to impossible to control in case anything goes wrong in living people after 'making' them. We may end up creating new diseases when we cannot even fight HIV and cancer presently. There are hidden possibilities of falty production of living babies, crazy future of society and scary kind of businees, etc. etc., any of which goes uncontrolled, it may be threat to Humanity. What is so much pressing need to go ahead with this unnatural thing? Why not save rather save babies who are dying of hunger and poverty?