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Tuesday July 11, 2006
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Artificial Sperm Produce Abnormal Mice in Recent Experiment
Embryonic researchers’ ultimate goal is eugenicists’ Holy Grail
by Hilary White
GÖTTINGEN, July 11, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A German experiment has shown that it is possible to create artificial sperm in a laboratory and use them to produce offspring in mice. The researchers, based at the Georg-August University in Göttingen, Germany, claim that the discovery could one day help infertile couples and even be used to produce embryos that can be used to obtain stem cells for more research into diseases.
The experiment, published in the journal Developmental Cell, produced seven baby mice, six of which survived to adulthood. The mice showed abnormalities, including one that had difficulty breathing.
Stem cells were removed from a mouse embryo allowed to grow for three days. They were manipulated to produce sperm cells and inserted into a mouse ovum by a method called intracytoplasmic injection.
The abstract at Developmental Cell Online says the fact that the experiment succeeded in producing live mice “is a clear indication that male gametes derived in vitro from ES cells by this strategy are able to induce normal fertilization and development.”
Professor Harry Moore, professor of reproductive biology at the University of Sheffield, told the BBC, “We therefore have to be very cautious about using such techniques in therapies to treat men or women who are infertile due to a lack of germ stem cells until all safety aspects are resolved. This may take many years.”
Using such techniques in human beings, however, would not only present medical barriers, but would result in the deaths of more human embryos that would be created for the purpose. This May, US researcher Dr. David Reardon, Ph.D., warned that such experiments were opening the door for human engineering, an end long sought by the modern biotechnology industry.
Reardon, a biomedical ethicist whose studies have been published in the British Medical Journal and the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, told LifeSiteNews.com that while embryonic researchers talk about ending disease, their ultimate goal is to create “better people,” the eugenicists’ Holy Grail.
Although artificial procreation was developed in the agriculture industry for production of food animals, since its use on human beings it has been shown to cause frequent birth defects. News articles appear weekly showing that children produced by in vitro fertilization and other artificial methods, suffer birth defects and sometimes hidden genetic problems throughout their lives.
In 2002, two major studies published in the New England Medical Journal showed that the risk of birth defects double with children produced by artificial means.
One concluded, “Infants conceived with use of intracytoplasmic sperm injection or in vitro fertilization have twice as high a risk of a major birth defect as naturally conceived infants.”
Read the abstract at Developmental Cell journal:
http://www.developmentalcell.com/content/article/abstract?ui...
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Why Embryonic Stem Cell Research? It's About Human Engineering, Not Ending Disease
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/may/06050902.html
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