Creating your own babies without having sex could be a possibility
- We’re only 20 years away from couples giving birth to babies of their dreams
- You can start a family of your own and you will not need sex at all
- The reproductive possibility is being considered to help lower the costs of health care
FollowWhile crawling the treasure trove of information we have online, we hit upon this nugget of information. Well, not nugget if you see it correctly. It is actually a major explosion in the evolution of man if it were to come to pass.
According to Prof Henry Greely director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Law and the Biosciences, we’re only 20 years away from couples giving birth to babies of their dreams…and it doesn’t involve sex.
Confused? Is that even something we would be looking forward to? Apparently, this method could be a boon for many infertile couples or couples who end up spending their life savings on adoption, in-vitro fertilisation and surrogacy, in having a baby to complete their family.
The motion is bound to rake up debate since it does seem like going against the norms of natural procreation and human biology as we know it. But, in the past few decades science and medicine have created wonders in labs, petridishes and testubes.
Prof Greely’s contention is that all that is needed to create a baby of your dreams is that the mother’s skin cells is enough to do the job, DNA samples from both the parents will be used. From there, scientists will be able to turn the cells into eggs, then hundreds of embryos—allowing parents to choose which baby they’d prefer to grow in the womb. So, no sex required.
You don’t believe it, do you? Well, we did not believe test tube babies at one point of time, did we? In fact, Prof Greely has also written a book on the same, it goes by the title - The End of Sex and the Future of Human Reproduction (Harvard University Press, 2016).
This doctor is talking about life-changing, species altering inventions. Greely describes a scenario: A couple wanting a child would create 100 embryos and receive a DNA dossier for each. This would reveal the presence of genes for serious life-threatening diseases as well as markers that confer increased risk for less serious conditions, but it also might include genes for physical features, including eye and hair colour, height and body type, and markers for behavioural traits such as athleticism or musical ability. The hopeful parents would then select which embryo to implant based on its expected characteristics.(Source)
Needless to say, the question arises, are we talking of designer babies then? Prof Greely has been dismissive of that and has been quoted as saying that the baby will have the DNA or features that stems from the parents. There will be other issues of combating diseases, the skin texture, and the question of ethics, laws, parental rights etc but Prof Greely is of the view that all this can be tided over, because of the immense possibility it presents. Also because of this one fact – parents will be able to use this method of conception for free.
As of now the scenario is being considered for the US only. But we can be sure that in 20 years or even earlier with our changing lifestyles and progression in the field of medicine, the method could be considered for foreign shores like India as well. This reproductive possibility could allow infertile couples have a baby of their own, same sex couples use the DNA of one of their own to have a baby and even allow many women who feel are unable to balance motherhood and profession to choose a time when they wish to settle down and start a family.
According to a research published in Nature, scientists are experimenting on how to create an embryo using something other than our eggs and sperm to create babies.
All said and done, the research and the knowledge of something like this existing in the future certainly seems exciting as well as dangerous.
