In the future, two men can make a baby. Even more shocking, just one man can make his own offspring. Yes, no need for a woman to supply the eggs.
The astounding claims were made on Tuesday by scientists from a leading university in the United Kingdom as they revealed the results of a new research on human reproduction, The Christian Post reports.
The scientists from the Department of Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Bath in England announced that they have developed a technique of parthenogenesis—the reproduction from an ovum without fertilisation—using mice as subjects. The technique resulted in the birth of healthy baby mice with a success rate of up to 24 percent, according to the scientists.
The scientists said their discovery put into question two centuries of accepted wisdom that egg cells are required for the creation of offspring.
"This is first time that full term development has been achieved by injecting sperm into embryos," said molecular embryologist Dr. Tony Perry, senior author of the study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications.
Perry explained the breakthrough finding: "It had been thought that only an egg cell was capable of reprogramming sperm to allow embryonic development to take place. Our work challenges the dogma, held since early embryologists first observed mammalian eggs around 1827 and observed fertilisation 50 years later, that only an egg cell fertilised with a sperm cell can result in a live mammalian birth."
He said the discovery could have a huge and radical impact on society. "One possibility, in the distant future, is that it might be possible that ordinary cells in the body can be combined with a sperm so that an embryo is formed," Perry told the BBC.
This means that two men in a same-sex relationship could have a child of their own without resorting to adoption, he said. One would donate an ordinary cell while the other would give his sperm to produce the child.
Theoretically, one man could also have his own child without having a partner—either male or female. He could simply use his own cells and sperm to produce his own child who would end up being more like a non-identical twin than a clone, Perry said.
The scientist cautioned, however, that at this time all these projections are still "speculative and fanciful."
