Aarathi Prasad has seen the future of reproduction, and it doesn’t involve sex, said Kira Cochrane in The Guardian (U.K.). In her book, Like a Virgin, the biologist and British TV presenter describes what she calls the “ultimate solo parent” of the future: A woman who uses her stem cells and an artificial Y chromosome to create “pseudo-sperm,” then fertilizes one of her own eggs and gestates the resulting embryo in an external, artificial womb. Prasad has one daughter from a previous relationship, and says her inspiration for exploring the science came from wanting a large family but not having found the right partner. “I remember waking up on a bed with my daughter thinking, ‘If some animals can have babies without males, why can’t humans?’”
If they can’t right now, they’ll be able to soon, said Tracy Clark-Flory in Salon.com. Prasad reports that it isn’t a question of if, but when, such reproductive techniques will usher in a new era of reproductive freedom. In fact, any man will be able to reproduce on his own too. “It’s not magic,” says Prasad, who has already gotten backlash. “The whole [Aldous] Huxley concept of Brave New World comes up, imagining babies being farmed in dystopias,” she says. Though reproductive technologies of the future will present new ethical questions, Prasad argues they’ll solve some old ones. “It’s going to be very hard to argue that you shouldn’t use this artificial womb instead of paying a poor woman in the Ukraine or India to do it for you.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
-
Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
-
The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
-
Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
-
Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
-
Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
-
You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
-
Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”