A possibly significant piece of science was published in Cell online on Christmas Eve, but no one much noticed for a couple of months. It carried this unprepossessing title:
SOX17 Is a Critical Specifier of Human Primordial Germ Cell Fate
Scientists at the University of Cambridge working with the Weizmann Institute have created primordial germ cells — cells that will go on to become egg and sperm — using human embryonic stem cells. Although this had already been done using rodent stem cells, the study, published today in the journal Cell, is the first time this has been achieved efficiently using human stem cells.
Two months later, Lois Rogers of the London Sunday Times caught on that these were artificial gametes, interviewed some of the scientists and published a piece titled
Cell breakthrough to bring two-dad babies
A senior co-author, Jacob Hanna of the Israeli Weizmann Institute, went so far as to suggest that the technique might lead to a baby “in just two years.” (Other experts are not convinced; the phrase “total baloney” has been used.) And from there, the story hit Newsweek and a flurry of headlines.
Artificial gametes have been a source of discussion for so long that a recent survey in Human Reproduction turned up 2424 articles. Indeed, the UK HFEA has had a backgrounder on the subject for at least five years; the use of “in-vitro derived gametes” for reproduction is prohibited in the UK, and the creation of embryos for research would require a license.
The views, opinions and positions expressed by these authors and blogs are theirs and do not necessarily represent that of the Bioethics Research Library and Kennedy Institute of Ethics or Georgetown University.