Making sperm from stem cells

Women have long known that “men are a bit of a waste of space,” said Emily Cook in Britain’s The Mirror, but a new technique developed by British scientists may prove just “how unnecessary blokes truly are.” Karim Nayernia and his team have created human sperm out of embryonic stem cells. This “revolutionary” discovery will hopefully be used to study genetic disorders and treat male infertility, but couldn’t it also make men redundant?

Indeed, this “profoundly shocking” discovery could lead to an ethical and reproductive “nightmare,” said Michael Hanlon in the London Daily Mail. Karim Nayernia hasn’t (yet) been able to create sperm from a female embryo, but the “genie is now well and truly out of the bottle,” and it doesn’t seem implausible that a “gay woman” could soon father a child—or more “mind-boggling” still, that a woman could be both her child’s mom and dad.

“The end of men has always been a possibility,” said bioethicist John Harris in Britain’s The Independent, but I still “can’t see the downside” to this breakthrough, assuming it’s real. It’s no more wrong to choose your sperm than your reproductive partner. The real ethical problem would be if we let “prejudice of fear” stop us from pursuing such potentially beneficial research.

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