Startup to try to turn stem cells into eggs, sperm

Conception, a Berkeley-based biotech startup, is trying to accelerate — and subsequently commercialize — a field of biomedical research known as “in vitro gametogenesis” (IVG).

Matt Krisiloff, one of the company’s founders, recently stated: “Basically, we’re trying to turn a type of stem cell called an induced pluripotent stem into a human egg.”

One of Conception’s goals is to utilize IVG to create eggs from the cell of a man.  That egg could then be fertilized with sperm from his male partner, at which point a surrogate mother could then carry the resulting embryo through to birth.  This would result in a baby genetically related to both men.  IVG could also be used to create sperm for lesbian couples, allowing them to have babies with genes from both women.  And, of course, transgender couples could also use IVG to have biologically related babies.

This would render heterosexual couplings utterly unnecessary, moot.  Yay!

We don’t know the health or other implications for the babies created this way, but who really cares about that anyway?

Let’s go ahead and completely decouple male-female intercourse from anatomy, sex, and procreation!  How freeing!  Let’s decouple all of this from coupling!  Brilliant!  What could go wrong?  While we’re at it, we should remove the archaic and arbitrary “moral” barriers that heretofore discouraged humans from having sex with dead humans — or attempting sex with animals, for that matter.  How exclusionary!  How regressive!  How repressive!  How 1950s Republican!

We already have lab-grown diamonds.  Better than the real thing!  Surely, we will also be better off with artificial intelligence, sex-bots, lab-grown meat…and lab-grown people.

Call it Genesis 2.0.  Better than the original, no?

God help us.

File photo of Petri dishes by Pxfuel.