- This is an arm.
This is skin on an arm.
You can itch it, moisturize it,
tattoo it, stretch it, peel it.
Ugh, that's gross.
And you can make a baby from it.
(lively music)
(babies giggling)
- Hello, you've reached the office of Doctor X.
For a skin biopsy to create eggs, press one.
For a skin biopsy to create sperm, press two.
For all other services, please stay on the line.
- This is obviously, a fake message on a
fake doctor's fake answering machine.
But it could be real in the next 40 years
according to Doctor Hank Greely,
Professor of Law and Genetics
at Stanford University and author of
The End of Sex and the Future of Human Reproduction.
So your book is titled End of Sex.
Do you really think that
people are going to stop having sex?
- No, in fact, my strongest prediction is that
in 20 to 40 years people will still have sex.
But when they wanna make babies,
they'll go to a lab.
What's going to change that will be ways
to take skin cells and turn them into
what are induced pluripotent stem cells.
- The amazing thing about induced pluripotent stem cells
is that they can be reprogrammed
into any type of cell
including cells to create eggs or sperm.
This entire process is called
in vitro gametogenesis or IVG.
Not to be confused with the
common procedure known as IVF.
Here's the thing, so far we've really
only done it in mice.
But there's ongoing studies that suggest
this could be the future of human reproduction.
By creating eggs and sperm outside
of the human body, IVG will allow us
to push nature's reproductive boundaries.
With this technology, virtually anyone
from post-menopausal women to same sex couples
may be able to create biological families
through a simple skin biopsy.
So how far are we from making this a reality
for prospective parents?
- I figure it's about somewhere between
five to 10 years to get proof of principle.
Before somebody's able to make
human eggs and human sperm.
- And with an added decade or two
for safety testing, we could be seeing
the widespread use of this technology
in about 40 years, according to Greely.
40 years may seem like a long way off,
but this technology has ethical challenges
that we should start wrestling with now.
One of the biggest challenges is that
IVG could make it infinitely easier for
parents to select certain traits in their kids
pushing us closer to the much-feared
designer babies hysteria that surrounds
most fertility research.
Embryo selection is already being done with IVF.
Doctors fertilize a bunch of eggs
and look at the genetic makeup of those embryos.
Then, they pick the most viable one.
- Right now the biggest obstacle for somebody
who wants to make a choice about an embryo
and the wanting a particular trait
and trait selection is the number of eggs
that can be retrieved from a woman.
So one of the advantages of IVG is that we could
derive, basically, an unlimited amount of eggs.
- And an unlimited amount of eggs means
we could produce an unlimited amount
of embryos for prospective parents to choose from.
Right now parents typically screen embryos
for health reasons, but that could change
as embryo selection technology
becomes more advanced.
We could even see IVG combined with gene editing.
- Then suddenly we're catering to a much more
eugenic impulse among people towards having,
if not the perfect baby, the best baby there can be.
Many people think it'd be great to eradicate
serious health conditions, but members of disability
community, understandably, feel as though
these are targeting them.
- And while these new technologies
feel like unknown territory,
it's also strangely familiar.
The same conversation was in play with IVF.
When IVF became available in the 1970s,
concerned citizens were afraid of a slippery slope
where parents could select their baby's gender
and where babies could gestate in laboratories.
And they're right.
That slope exists.
And we're on it.
But is it something to fear?
IVF has allowed eight million of our
family and friends to exist.
And like IVF, in vitro gametogenesis
could be a game-changing technology
for millions of people around the world.
Terms like reproductive technology,
IVF and IVG are clinical terms
that could detach us from what's
really going on here.
We're creating future generations
of human beings that will carry on our
traits, legacy and ideas long after we're gone.
How we create those human beings
and whether we do it safely and ethically
is a paramount responsibility that we all share.
As skin cell embryos inch their way
from the lab to the crib,
the conversations we have over the next decades
will influence how this technology
shapes the future of humanity.
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