Quest to create viable human sex cells in lab progressing rapidly, with huge implications for reproduction
Scientists are just a few years from creating viable human sex cells in the lab, according to an internationally renowned pioneer of the field, who says the advance could open up biology-defying possibilities for reproduction.
Speaking to the Guardian, Prof Katsuhiko Hayashi, a developmental geneticist at the University of Osaka, said rapid progress is being made towards being able to transform adult skin or blood cells into eggs and sperm, a feat of genetic conjury known as in-vitro gametogenesis (IVG).
His own lab is about seven years away from the milestone, he predicts. Other frontrunners include a team at the University of Kyoto and a California-based startup, Conception Biosciences, whose Silicon Valley backers include the OpenAI founder, Sam Altman and whose CEO told the Guardian that growing eggs in the lab “might be the best tool we have to reverse population decline” and could pave the way for human gene editing.
My grandfather went to the bathroom in the outhouse (I know because I visited him). The improvement in the modern lifestyle is huge. You just don’t know because you grew up with running water and didn’t grow your own chickens for eggs
Please don’t make assumptions of my lived experience based on your grandfather’s toileting practices. That doesn’t make sense. Regarding the progression of society, there is an interim step that you are skipping over. We didn’t go from subsistence farming to our present state. We grew a civilization over time.
I am not anti-societal growth. I am anti-endless growth. Capitalism demands an endless amount of growth so that the people at the top are always making more money. It is inherent in the system that there can never be enough. I disagree with this and believe that we would be better off if we defined a standard of living that allowed people to be happy and pursue their own passions while not exploiting one another and over-consuming resources.
On an old commute I used to pass a sticker that said, “If you had enough, would you know it?” In our current system, the answer to that question will always be no because there will always be pressure to want more. This creates an infinite pursuit of more that is damaging to our psyche. We spend more time wanting than we do having. If we had a realistic goal, one that prioritized happiness and health over always getting more, then we wouldn’t need an ever-growing society with an ever-growing population. We could shrink it and improve both the environment and our quality of life.
A stable human population of 9 billion cannot have endless growth in population, but you can conceivably endlessly improve people’s lifestyles through technological improvement (well, until we know everything there is to know about science)
What does technological progression without the oppressive aspects of capitalism look like? (I don’t know, and don’t know if there is an answer.)
It seems to me that the current trend of population decline in the west is fine for humanity because it is not a sharp cut, but a taper, while it is a problem for capitalism because fewer people equal smaller markets over time. A stable population would also, based on this, cause problems for capitalism because the markets would not be growing and the infinitely increasing return expected by investors would fail to materialize.
The markets would be growing as productivity is always growing, and there’s real wage growth as well, so there’s more goods and services people consume over time.
Productivity has been increasing for decades, but real wages have not kept pace and income inequality continues to grow.