By rickyjames, Section News Posted on Wed Jul 02, 2003 at 03:14:57 AM PST
What is the definition of a mother? Whatever it is, recent research highlights the need for a modified definition that deletes the necessity of a mature female being involved. The twenty-first century is well on its way to converting Huxley's Brave New World from a science-fiction literary classic into a children's bedtime story....or history. Consider....
As reported by Steve Connor in the UK Independent, a new phrase is about to be added to our lexicon; the "unwed mother" is about to be joined by the "unborn mother." Dr. Tal Biron-Shental, a gynecologist from Meir Hospital-Sapir Medical Centre in Kfar Saba, Israel, obtained ovarian tissue from seven aborted fetuses aged between 22 and 33 weeks and managed to keep slices of the ovaries alive for four weeks, long enough for the follicles to develop to the stage when they began to produce the female hormone oestradiol.
"We didn't have mature oocytes, we had follicles that changed from primordial follicles and survived. We had E2 [oestradiol] secretion which means that we had more secondary follicles which means there was a development," Dr Biron-Shental said.
Further experimentation may lead to mature egg cells being routinely harvested from aborted fetuses. Experiments with mice have shown that it is possible to mature fetal eggs fully, fertilize them in a test tube, implant them into an adult mouse and produce healthy offspring. Some scientists hope to be able to do the same with human material obtained from aborted fetuses as a replacement for current human egg donors who undergo some significant health risks.
And in years to come, the "mature adult" into which these fertilized eggs may be implanted may not even be a female. As reported by Martin Hutchinson of the BBC, Swedish Professor Mats Brannstrom says that it may even be technically possible one day to transplant a womb into a man and use hormone injections to allow a pregnancy to succeed. He revealed last year that he had transplanted wombs into mice - and produced live baby mice. The procedure of womb transplantation has also been performed in humans, attempted by surgeons in Saudi Arabia. Their success was short-lived - the organ had to removed less than 100 days later when a blood supply failure caused the transplanted tissue to start dying. There was no attempt to start a pregnancy with this patient. But it was a start.
So consider the possibilities. An egg cell removed from an aborted fetus is irradiated and injected with the chromosomes of a male donor, starting a clone that is brought to term inside the same male donor who is also a transplant recipient of a test-tube grown womb started from a cell of his own mother's womb to lessen rejection complications. A healthy baby is born. Who's Mom? Could be the next Fox reality TV show...
Bookmark this story with del.icio.us
Digg this story
Furl this item
Have you Reddit?