Making life in labs

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Up next…manipulating human reproduction.

Earlier this month, a team of scientists out of Oregon announced they successfully fertilized human egg cells in the lab…but these were no ordinary cells.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Dr. Paula Amato leads Oregon Health and Science University’s research on endocrinology and infertility. She talked about her research on the Peter Attia podcast this summer.

PAULA AMATO: In vitro gametogenesis, which is making eggs and sperm, potentially from skin cells.

What’s the objective here…and is it ethical? Joining us now to talk about it is David Prentice…he’s a PhD stem cell expert and co-founder of the Science Alliance for Life and Technology.

REICHARD: David, good morning.

DAVID PRENTICE: Good morning. Good to be with you.

REICHARD: Well, let’s start with the basic facts…human females naturally produce eggs, and males produce sperm. So (in layman’s terms) how did scientists manage to make eggs and sperm from skin cells?

PRENTICE: Their starting point was a clone, taking that nucleus from a skin cell, putting it into an egg, making a whole new human being. But then further manipulations to get that new human being to toss away half of his or her chromosomes so that they could then call it an egg. It looked a little bit like an egg and acted a little bit like an egg. They could get a small percentage of them to fertilize with sperm. But this is such a strange and horrific way, actually, when you think about it, to make a human being, you actually create and then destroy a human being to make the egg and then try and recreate a human being under somewhat normal conditions.

REICHARD: And what’s the success rate?

PRENTICE: Let’s be clear that through all this manipulation, they really didn't achieve success. There was one quote that they got it to kind of partially work. It really didn't work very well at all. Only a small fraction of those laboratory- made eggs actually could be fertilized and grow for a little while, and again, they were destroyed, as they do in all of these experiments, after a few days. But even those that grew for a few days had genetic abnormalities. And there's a real question, even from researchers who support these kinds of experiments, as to whether this type of procedure would ever actually work to produce normal human beings.

REICHARD: David, we reached out to Dr. Amato and her team, and their spokesman said “it’s not yet clear whether this technique will ultimately be safe enough to use clinically.”

What do we know of the medical purpose these researchers have in mind?

PRENTICE: One of the things that's often cited is there are so many people who suffer from infertility, women who can't produce eggs, who can't become fertile and actually carry a child. So the thing they'll first trot out is, oh, well, we could make eggs that would be genetically matched to them, and then they could have a baby. And it's always gets spun out from there, of course. Well, what about homosexual couples? Gay couples could make eggs or make sperm and be able then to create genetically related individuals. It keeps going from there; there's actually one proposal that one person could make eggs or sperm from these types of procedures, and you could have what's termed a uni-baby, somebody who was created by fertilization after you'd gone through these other techniques. But it's, it's all of their own genetics.

REICHARD: What are the rules on this kind of research? Can they take the next steps of creating embryos…and born children?

PRENTICE: Well, there are some regulations and some laws in place. We don’t have a lot, even in the U.S. At least at the federal level, there's a, it's a rider that's put on every year by Congress since 2015 it's called the Adderhold Amendment, and it says that you can't genetically modify and create genetically modified embryos and gestate them. There are laws, actually in about a dozen states that would prevent them from doing this cloning type of procedure.

So that you know they may be able to do some of this in some states, but there are others where they would be precluded from doing it, even in the laboratory, and it looks like this federal prohibition might prevent them from ever gestating these particular individuals, which is a good thing.

Let's, let's go back to the real reason they want to do this. They want to play God. They want to make human beings and do all sorts of experiments on them. And it's just something that we shouldn't really even cross that threshold.

REICHARD: I’m curious: do scientists ever ask themselves, ‘What’s in the best interest of the child?”

PRENTICE: You've really put your finger on what are the main problems here. And it's that they're not thinking about children. They're thinking of children, let's say, as commodities, as products that can be manufactured, and it's to satisfy the desires of adults, and they're not thinking about what's best for the child that might be created and not what's best for society as a whole.

REICHARD: David Prentice is co-founder of the Science Alliance for Life and Technology. Thank you, David.

PRENTICE: Thank you.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.