BRITAIN: Scientists Claim Creating Babies With Two Same-Sex Parents Is Possible

The original Sunday Times article is behind a paywall. The Daily Mail recaps:

Babies with two fathers or two mothers could become a reality after a breakthrough by researchers at Cambridge. They have shown that it is possible to make human egg and sperm cells using skin from two adults of the same sex. The development could help men and women who have become infertile through disease or gay couples to have children. But critics voiced concern, arguing that the breakthrough brings closer the prospect of 'designer babies', in which the looks, character and health attributes of children would be selected by parents. The scientists from Cambridge University and the Weizmann Institute in Israel used skin from five adults to artificially create 'germ' cells, or stem cells, which make sperm and eggs in the body. The academics say the cells could also be used as a "repair kit" to heal tissue in any part of the body. Jacob Hanna, the specialist leading the project's Israeli arm, said the technique could be used to create a baby just two years from now. However, he conceded that ethical implications needed to be considered carefully. "I am not in favour of creating engineered humans but I am very confident it will work and will be very relevant to anyone who has lost their fertility through disease."

Much more at the second link above.

Pope: Ban Fertility Treatments

If God wants you to have a baby, he'll give you one from regular fucking. Any other way to get a baby? That's from Satan.

Speaking at the end of three-day convention on diagnosing and treating infertility at the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI slammed artificial procreation and fertility treatments. Marriage was the only place to create a human being, he said. The comments reaffirm the decision Catholic leadership has held on artifical reproduction since 2008. “The human and Christian dignity of procreation, in fact, doesn’t consist in a ‘product,’” he said, “ but in its link to the conjugal act, an expression of the love of the spouses of their union, not only biological but also spiritual.” The pope is pressing for a ban on artificial procreation and called on science and fertility experts to resist “easy income, or even worse the arrogance of taking the place of the Creator.”

Another agreement between the Vatican and the AFA.

Family Planning

(Via JMG reader Al)

Tainted Love

Male fertility probably isn't a major concern for most of you, but scientists say they've found a new predictor for low sperm count. It's the length of your taint. SRSLY.

That distance, measured from the anus to the underside of the scrotum, is linked to male fertility, including semen volume and sperm count, the study found. The shorter the AGD, the more likely a man was to have a low sperm count. This offers the prospect of a relatively simple screening test for men, said study co-author Shanna Swan of the University of Rochester Medical Center. "It's non-invasive and anybody can do it, and it's not sensitive to the kinds of things that sperm count is sensitive to, like stress or whether you have a cold or whether it's hot out," Swan said in a telephone interview.

You know somebody is going to work this into a porn plot.

(Tipped by JMG reader Marlin)

Offspring Created From Two Male Mice

Using stem cell technology, scientists have been able to create male and female baby mice from two male parents. Most notably for us here, the breakthrough raises the possibility of same-sex couples having children genetically related to both parents.

In the work reported today, the Behringer team manipulated fibroblasts from a male (XY) mouse fetus to produce an induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell line. About one percent of iPS cell colonies grown from this XY cell line spontaneously lost the Y chromosome, resulting in XO cells. The XO iPS cells were injected into blastocysts from donor female mice. The treated blastocysts were transplanted into surrogate mothers, which gave birth to female XO/XX chimeras having one X chromosome from the original male mouse fibroblast. The female chimeras, carrying oocytes derived from the XO cells, were mated with normal male mice. Some of the offspring were male and female mice that had genetic contributions from two fathers.

This work could also help in the battle to preserve endangered animal species.

UPDATE: The Family Research Council is reassuring their followers that nothing will come of this in human terms.

Breeding For God

A fascinating article in the Telegraph UK points out that outside of age and marital status, religiosity is the greatest predictor of how many children a European woman will produce. Since the power of Christ isn't compelling atheists to breed, they crank out relatively fewer refusniks.

Data is rare in this area, but what they do have suggests that atheists are a dying breed. Austria is the only country which records the religious belief of parents but their figure, of 0.85 children per atheist woman, is far below replacement rate (2.1) and below even the most barren European country’s average rate, which is about 1.2. And since most people inherit their parents’ political and religious world views, this is bad news for Team Dawkins.

The article cites this gem from philosopher Julian Baggini.

I have one, and only one, firm and sincere desire about what quality my grandchildren should possess: non-existence. The issue for me is rather one about the possible forms of the good life. I just cannot understand why it is that the vast majority of people seem to think breeding is a vital component of a flourishing existence.

We'll make it up by recruiting.