- Scientists have succeeded in growing sperm in a laboratory
for the first time, paving the way for infertile men to produce their own
genetic offspring.
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- The team, from the Machida district of Tokyo, also believe
they will be able to reprogramme male cells into producing eggs so that
men can both father and "mother" children. This could allow gay
men to be parents together.
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- At the moment the technique, which clones embryo cells
and turns them into sperm, has been attempted only with mice. But the
researchers plan to test the techniques on adult men. Although cloning
humans is banned under Japanese law, the new technique gets round the restriction
because it uses cloning to produce the seed for a new baby rather than
the baby itself.
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- The development has been condemned by medical ethics
groups as a further step in the "brutalisation" of modern science.
They believe it risks turning human life into a commodity with no limits
on the experimental techniques for which it can be used.
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- The new technique was disclosed at a recent biologists'
conference in Japan and will be unveiled to the international scientific
community in a publication next year.
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- Poshiaki Nose, of the Mitsubishi Kasei Institute, described
last week how he had worked out which of the cells in early embryos were
destined to grow into the baby's germ cells - sperm or eggs.
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- In the early days after fertilisation, the embryo is
a mass of so-called stem cells, each programmed to develop into a different
part of the body. Nose's technique involves using genetic markers to work
out which cells have the genes involved in sperm manufacture "switched
on".
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- He has grown these cells into sperm in the laboratory
before they are implanted back into the testes. They appear genetically
normal.
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- "We have no reason to doubt that these sperm are
viable," Nose said. "The stem cell-derived sperm are exactly
the same as those produced by the testes and we are now seeing if we can
make them fertilise normal eggs."
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- Other researchers noted that the Japanese team had yet
to produce a healthy baby, but few doubt they will be successful.
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