The original title is "Directed differentiation of human iPSCs to functional ovarian granulosa-like cells via transcription factor overexpression".
Also, although I'm not sure that I understand this completely, it seems to me that this isn't quite a new development. For example, here's a 2016 paper claiming to do something very similar [1] (with the additional step of transplanting the human cells into mice): https://www.spandidos-publications.com/10.3892/mmr.2016.5191
[1]: From the 2016 paper: "In the present study, human iPSCs were induced to differentiate into ovarian granulosa-like cells (OGLCs) in vitro. Subsequently, these cells were transplanted into POF mice."
Hi, I'm the first author on the eLife paper. The 2016 paper you mentioned is basically worthless (their differentiation method doesn't make biological sense and didn't work when I tried it, they're only looking at a small subset of cherrypicked markers to conclude they have granulosa cells, and also, these people are from the "Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine"). We have much more functional validation of our granulosa-like cells, in terms of gene expression, hormone production, and follicle formation.
As someone who just spent 9 weeks in the hospital with his wife in order to safely deliver his child, I’d just like to say that this sort of tech can’t come too soon. I’ve always wanted to be a father, but due to PCOS it was questionable whether it would ever happen. IVF finally worked after five years, and then we capped it off with a mega hospital stay.
Totally worth it, but I definitely wouldn’t choose to do it if there was any other option.
Point being, the default comment for reproductive research seems to be “Oh no.” And I’ve never understood this. Having babies naturally sucks. It’s difficult, painful, and something that people do because they have to, not because it’s fun. And in the worst case it can kill your wife, which was on the table for us.
Bring on the incubation pods, I say. We have six more embryos in cold storage, and it feels so surreal. We have the option of having a kid when we’re 60 — we won’t, obviously, but it’s literally a miracle that we could. (We’ll probably donate the embryos.)
We’re definitely living in the future, and I am so grateful. More advances in this space, please.
Congratulations. Wife and I are on our fourth round of IVF with only two embryos so far. Our odds don't look too promising and will probably end up going the donor's eggs path. The process of having a live, healthy birth when biology refuses to cooperate is emotionally and financially draining for millions of couples. If technology like in vitro gametogenesis becomes available in the near future it will be a real miracle of science. Nothing to be worried or scared about.
I just wanted to send you some hope, as someone who understands all too well what it feels like when it doesn’t work. I was close to giving up many times. I don’t want to send you false hope, just some real hope.
Best of luck to you and your wife, and please do reach out if you ever need someone to vent to or to chat with.
Thank you. She’s still baking in the NICU, but Kess will be home with us within a couple weeks. Bonus pic of her figuring out how to create a sleep mask out of random parts: https://imgur.com/a/luDdo6E
You're probably well aware and quickly fixed the issue after the photo was taken, but I just need to say it's a really bad idea to have ANYTHING in an infants crib that they can use to block their airways like that.
Glad to see she's doing well and hope you have good times with her once she's home!
We had a 2 week NICU stay for our daughter earlier this year. The nurses loved putting items in the crib to make the baby happier but they always looked at me and said, “don’t do this at home!”
Because the child can't consent to having their face permanently recorded in public social media. It's becoming a thing not to post photos of children until they can make their own decisions.
> Having babies naturally sucks. It’s difficult, painful, and something that people do because they have to, not because it’s fun.
An unpopular fact: nobody has to reproduce. It's an optional, opt-in choice.
Most people seem to make this choice, like many other lifestyle choices, so it's easy to gloss over the fact that it's a decision that was made (and that that decision has consequences). But a decision it is, and an optional one it remains.
The "overpopulation" people are essentially the most disingenuous concern trolls of the modern epoch. Since every problem can be expressed as a "per capita" value, its very easy to claim that less people would obviously fix whatever problem you're talking about (despite it not changing the facts on the ground: i.e. CO2 emitting power generation would continue to warm the planet whether it supplies 5 billion people or 10 billion - whether it happens now or in 100 years, mankind winds up just as screwed).
You then of course get the people who don't actually get that every generation is...well a new generation. For as many displaced and orphaned children as their are, there is not nearly enough for everyone who wants to raise a child to have one (nor any practical way to fix the logistics of that process, even before we get to biological imperatives).
And of course finally you have the reality that none of the people who ever bring this up seem to actually be aware of any of the statistics surrounding it: i.e. most western nations are at or below replacement level, so any population increase comes from migration. Birth rates are also falling in the 3rd world[1] - and this is principally attributed to success in fighting poverty, promoting women's rights and education, as well as family planning work. It turns out population management is easy - it's so easy that we've succeeded at it without even really trying.
Which leads to - as you note - the utterly shitty rhetoric everytime there's a breakthrough in reproductive healthcare. A whole little army of childless 20-year olds who feel entitled to pass judgement on people experiencing reproductive trouble, who want a child, and are going to have...you know, on average 2 children maybe because they're still accessing a high tech medical service.
I have always found it a fun paradox that some people, you for example, claim the earth is not overpopulated.
It's really not a paradox. Its a naive claim.
The facts being that humans consume and exploit the earth to a degree which destroys it is a - like i said fact - pretty well established.
Sure the earth might hold 10 billion people. But that's not really how to look at it.
No one in the western world will retract from their consumption levels in order to save the earth. Therfore we cannot be 8 billion and say we are not too many.
The western world is doomed as you know it if we are to survive here. And tech is not saving your ass, tech fucked us all over in the first place. Think about how people really believe riding a fucking electric vehicle is good for the planet. Wtf is wrong with people?
But you will perhaps like to live in the forest, eat only local foods and stop driving cars, having no fridge, no running water and wait for the shit to cool down. Of course you won't.
So you really have to be blind not to see we are way to many people.
> The "overpopulation" people are essentially the most disingenuous concern trolls of the modern epoch.
Ah go stuff it somewhere nobody wants to think about.
Because it's totally rational to understand that exponential population growth will end badly. And at the same time believe that the vast majority of humanity has a right to have children.
Population growth is slowing down and overpopulation isn't really a problem we should be concerned with. Look into it and you'll find we have plenty of space and resources, we just have to distribute it.
First, congratulations! Having a child is a wonderful experience. Personally, I think it's what makes life worth living.
That said, hate to be a downer, but I do want to point out some stuff:
> And I’ve never understood this
Let's just go through a few fairly obvious scenarios that can come from this:
- Once this is commercialized we no longer need women.
- Genetic diversity, thing of the past.
- DNA sequences are patented and owned by biotech at birth, you'll have to pay your loan back for life.
- Kill switch added to every human, such that if you question your authoritarian masters, they'll kill everyone with the given switch. (i.e. cloned slaves)
- Governments can castrate the entire population and control the future (think this wouldn't happen, see how mandatory abortion laws for the genetically unfit - they have quite a few in Europe, Asia, etc).
- Genocide-made-easy, wipe any population you want out and grow a new one
Let's just consider the more mundane:
- We already have children without parents. Imagine the desire for any kind of foster situation when you can just grow your own.
- Elderly parents looking to raise children (say, as you say, in your 60's) could now do so
- Government raising & caring for children...
I'm sorry, I hear the calls for improvements in this area, but... the down side risks are enormous. I personally, think it's inevitable, but I also assume all technology will be used for maximal good and evil. Unfortunately, this technology seems like it has far more evil potential.
> Seriously, the idea that women are only useful to society as baby incubators is the most jaw-droppingly sexist thing I’ve seen on this site in years.
“Once this is commercialized we no longer need women” is a pretty clear statement that the only reason “we” need women is because we don’t have any other way to incubate babies. It’s what you said, whether or not it’s what you meant.
We no longer "need" men either, we can clone with embryos. We don't "need" either, objectively -- In the sense of reproduction (which is what we were discussing).
Further, it doesn't mean I think we should create an authoritarian dictatorship where dictators control cloned slaves. You know, something I also mentioned.
I'm stating alternatives that can occur and what others will think.
Doesn't matter. Those who already disagree with you will pretend to not understand speaking in generalities because it's convenient for them. Obviously you said what you said in the context of reproduction.
And yet I've witnessed feminists oppose effective male contraception simply because it would empower men and depower women. What do you think their opinions on artificial wombs are going to be?
Interesting, thanks for pointing that out. I didn’t realize the Chinese one-child policy’s effects had pushed things quite that far yet. Data here for the curious:
- Once this is commercialized we no longer need women.
We already "don't need men". Other mammals have been cloned or heterozygously created from bimaternal parents, and only females are required for either of these processes.
Also I imagine you'll still need a womb to grow the embryo? Ovaries are not a womb, so "commercializing" this alone doesn't obviate the need for women.
The first one is for a better incubator for premature babies. The second is in mice and doesnt sound particularly close, as they still required pregnant mice and the embryos die after a certain point because of lack of placenta. Neither of these seems very close to replacing the need for women, but maybe will be closer after 10 more years?
I think it’s relatively close, sure maybe 10 years, I’m not sure exactly. My point, was that this technology is going down this path and theoretically, pretty dangerous
Makes great sci-fi, well it could, your pitches are alright but we can already do most of these with good ol' fashion forced conception and if you can't get your followers to screw for the cause then you're probably not much of a threat. Doesn't the doomer sci-fi connect this to VR somehow? Like you don't just want to make babies, you put 'em in a maturation chamber and mature them, rapidly. Better ban VR, there's no legitimate use. I for one welcome our Meta-Clone Overlords.
There's even plenty of reason to doubt the motivations of the very researchers involved here. George Church is known to have had extensive ties and contacts with Jeffrey Epstein. Here is some research at Harvard that Epstein sponsored (along with the Gates Foundation) singing the praises of "eusocial" forms of social organization, where reproductive ability is confined to a tiny subset of the population: "The ties that bind – Harvard Gazette" https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/08/the-ties-that...
Do these people really intend for these technologies to benefit the broad mass of people?
The fact that this was so downvoted makes me worry. Yes, this would be massive for same-sex, trans, etc. couples. Anyone who is not able to carry a child to term. Right now having a child isn't a fundamental biological "right". We should strive to make it a human right, through technology, regardless of biology.
> The fact that this was so downvoted makes me worry.
Allowing LGBT couples to have biological children risks undercutting many common biology-based excuses for discrimination. For some, being solutions-oriented is less important than justifying existing biases and saving face.
Difficult to discern your exact point but maybe you're suggesting that it is not important because such people can just use surrogacy?
But surrogacy causes a lot of legal issues in a lot of countries, as well as necessitating trust of the surrogate mother. Not to mention issues for the surrogate mothers themselves who, as I understand it, are often treated poorly in poorer countries.
Of course, I'm sure there will be many legal issues with this alternative as well. But I don't think people will be complaining about having another option on the table.
One example related to this and the far-right shift in many western countries, in Italy they are retroactively removing the non-birth mother from birth certificates issued to lesbian couples.
Organoids are a really interesting George Church project. He wants to create human organs that didn't come from a body, but just grew on their own in a vat and are fully functional. Mind blowing.
What do you suspect will be the practical uses of this? Could it help researchers run experiments to develop better fertility protocols? Or depending on costs, fertility clinics could test various protocols to find the optimal "hormone environment" for promoting high quality egg development? Or is this going to a more "out there" direction as in you could grow an egg entirely in vitro for later fertilization and implantation?
3: I'm definitely excited about in vitro oogenesis and that's the direction I want to take this in the future. Right now, we're not able to reliably get the germ cells to do meiosis, so that's what I'm working on.
That's a completely different technology, artificial wombs are much harder than artificial ovaries. Very unlikely within 20 years, I won't speculate past that point.
> I wonder how far it is until transwomen could have a functional female reproductive system?
Actually, we are probably very far from that. And obviously, just because something is in the realm of possibility doesn't imply that we should do it.
May I recommend a short book by C. S. Lewis (the author of The Chronicles of Narnia)? It's called "The Abolition of Man", with the intended meaning of "Man" being just the mankind/humanity in general.
A central argument of the book is that a level of technological progress which enables arbitrary conditioning of human beings doesn't necessarily lead to some kind of liberation. More likely, it will empower the conditioners and destroy the constraints that fundamentally define our humanity. If you like liberty and humanity, that would be a grim prospect.
Technologies which would genuinely enable turning a man to a woman (in the biological sense) would also enable a lot of undesirable things (even if you think turning a man to a woman is itself something desirable).
It is the final frontier for a lot of the transphobic rhetoric out there. If an XY person can give birth, it makes obsolete any jibe or argument based on genetics or ‘biology’
The existence of intersex people has not put a stop to the insistence that gender is sex is binary because "biology." They just insist that any counterexample to their ideology is subhuman.
Helping transwomen have a body closer to what they desire and to be able to be pregnant is not just a vanity project, and to say there would be zero benefit is rather callous.
The benefit is huge, and the risk can be managed until it is reduced entirely.
Experimenting on babies-to-be by having them gestate inside a female reproductive system that has been grafted into a male body bears such a huge lifetime risk to their health, plus the risk to the recipient of these organs, that it would be unethical for any researchers to even attempt this.
That some men may desire the experience of pregnancy and childbirth for whatever reason doesn't mean there's any actual medical benefit. It's not exactly life-saving surgery.
It's not unethical at all. If we can make ovaries which are indistinguishable from cisfemale ovaries, and do the same for a womb, then there is no issue.
The whole female body is adapted for pregnancy, it's not simply a function of the womb and ovaries. For example, the pelvis is a different shape from males, and hormones released in pregnancy loosen the joints to allow the baby to grow and the pelvis to shift to accommodate the growing baby. There are many more anatomical and physiological specialisations like this that only apply to the female body.
This suggestion that there will be no issues if ovaries and a womb are fitted inside a male body is entirely unproven. The only way to prove it is to do the experiment and attempt to bring a baby to term, but this is a huge unknown and the ethical issues here are immense.
How many of these tiny, developing humans will die during this experimentation phase, or be permanently disabled for life? How much of their suffering is acceptable to fulfil this questionable agenda of enabling males to gestate a human?
Why should the desires of these men override the human rights of infants to not be experimented upon?
Could we please have the title corrected to "George Church Lab identifies factors in cell expression for female reproductive tissue related cells"? "Creates functional ovary" is such an extreme stretch it's not funny.
I've attempted an edit. If someone can suggest a better title (that means: more accurate and neutral, preferably using representative language from the article itself), we can change it again. Note that the limit is 80 chars.
(Submitted title was "George Church lab creates functional ovary tissue from adult human stem cells", which says "functional ovary tissue", not "functional ovary", but ok...)
I hope we can relieve women of the pressure of motherhood this way. Maybe we can even develop more equitable societies where any gender can raise any children, or all genders will be expected to raise all children.
Or, worst case, only poor people will be expected to raise children at all, and raising children will become a job/career bimodally distributed to the very poor earning almost nothing raising workers to fuel capitalism and the very wealthy developing dynasties to rule over the poor with.
Conversely, have we considered that motherhood is a joy and a privilege for women, that it is the most sublime fulfillment of their biological design and destiny, to bear and feed their young, to bond with them, to hold and touch them, to care for them, no matter what?
Have we considered, that despite the "pangs of childbirth" that are a very real part of the experience, that conception, pregnancy, and childbirth are natural processes, not diseases or disorders to be eliminated, and that mankind has been well-equipped to accompany women and support them every step of the way, no matter what obstacles they face, that they retain their dignity and continue to fulfill their vocation of motherhood?
I think describing motherhood as "the most sublime fulfilment of their biological design and destiny" is the sort of language many women I know to be extremely toxic to them. Especially women I know who are infertile, struggled to have children, or have lost children to miscarriage. Please reconsider this. Women are much more than their fertility on every level-- biologically and otherwise!
Additionally, I never called motherhood a disease or disorder to be eliminated. I only said I hoped the pressure on women to be mothers would lessen! You seem to be projecting here.
If women went around telling everyone what we thought about testicles, we’d get laughed right out of the public square. And yet men don’t hesitate to give their opinions about the process of childbirth, about which they know nothing firsthand.
Nowhere in those Wikipedia articles (or in anything else I’ve read on logical fallacies) is there any support for the idea that secondhand information is more valuable than firsthand information. I’m honestly curious why you think your opinions on childbirth are so valuable that they’re worth posting on Hacker News. Are you a researcher? An obstetrician? Because what it looks like to me is a JavaScript programmer who’s never written Rust giving their opinions on the borrow checker. I don’t deny them the right to have opinions on the borrow checker. I do question whether those opinions add anything to the conversation on this site.
This comment is misogynistic. Obviously a lot of women enjoy being mothers, but to say that it's a universal biological destiny is simply wrong. Women can participate in society and find fulfillment in many ways, regardless of whether or not they have kids.
Your words were "biological design and destiny". It's hard not to read that as saying that a woman's body is designed to have kids and that having kids is her destiny.
Please reconsider this notion that it's rare for women to have fulfillment in life without children. It's really hurtful to women who have trouble conceiving or have had miscarriages (miscarriages are shockingly common) to have the added societal pressure.
I hope you never express this attitude within earshot of a woman who is experiencing reproductive pain in her life.
You’re content to listen to what we tell you? Great. Then let me tell you, as a mother of two, that bearing children is not “the most sublime fulfillment” of my biological “design” or my “destiny.” I love my children to pieces. Being a parent is the best thing I have ever done with my life. But if I could have done it without the trauma of pregnancy and childbirth, I’d have a bigger family. I mourn the children I didn’t get to have because my body couldn’t do it. If my granddaughters get to skip some or all of that, I’ll be thrilled for them.
Some mothers find pregnancy and childbirth to be a deep, sublime, spiritual experience, the best thing they’ve ever done. Some mothers are miserable every minute of it: sick, traumatized, afraid. You do not have the right to speak for all of us when you’re quoting just those of us whose experience reinforces your opinions about how the world should work.
I've met plenty. They didn't use the word "sublime" but definitely shared the sentiment expressed in the grandparent post. I'm currently dating one who told me to my face that having my children is her dream.
While I’m usually all for technological advances, if a woman wanted to pursue this route, that would be a dealbreaker for me. This feels like some awful dystopian nightmare tech.
This technology feels rife for abuse in building armies or company-grown and owned “employees” that function as property of the corp. Artificial wombs may be cool for people who are otherwise infertile, but to see people so quick to replace natural childbirth with this to “relieve women of the pressure of motherhood.”
This feels like something that people who want a larger labor market would love. The population grows, and they never even have to have the women stop working! We’ve gone too far in the direction of fetishizing work in the USA. We shouldn’t be fighting for women’s work to be equal work with men, we should be fighting for the restoration of the family unit via increased wages that can support a family with only 1 salary. Propaganda has made us instead try to have both parents work full time jobs and raise the kids via daycare and TikTok, because that’s what makes a woman strong and independent. It’s sad to see people fight against their interests.
Many people DIED giving birth, dude. Many of them STILL die. Maternal mortality rates, for most of history, matched or exceeded the rates at which soldiers died in wars! This take is breathtakingly misogynist and also inaccurate as hell.
> I hope we can relieve women of the pressure of motherhood this way.
You should ask the mothers you know how they feel about that? The majority (i'd say the vast majority), consider motherhood the most important and best thing in their lives.
Plus, the only alternative is men? Who by definition cannot be "mothers". So you're describing being raise only by fathers. So.. now the suggestion is just adding pressure of fatherhood? lol
> Maybe we can even develop more equitable societies where any gender can raise any children, or all genders will be expected to raise all children.
All genders, in all cultures, do raise all children. That said, each likely plays a different role. Just imagine some hunter gatherer culture - men provide meat, teach their sons to hunt & fish too, teach their daughters to pick honorable men for husbands, maybe even find honorable men. Women, teach their children to clean animals, make clothes, make food & fires, etc. This tradition has largely stayed the same.
In the first world, Women have changed their roles, as automation replaced the need for many of the tasks. Men have continued to provide a similar role. In both cases, I argue parents are increasingly teaching their children less directly; outsourcing it to "educators". That said, I think it's had detrimental effects on families and you can see that in the depression rates, competency rates, divorce rates, etc.
> You should ask the mothers you know how they feel about that? The majority (i'd say the vast majority), consider motherhood the most important and best thing in their lives.
Yes, I know many women of my age. They feel really, really pressured to be mothers even when they don't want to be. Several women I know literally had to cut people out of their lives due to verbal abuse trying to pressure them to be mothers! Every mother I know also has expressed how exhausting motherhood is and emphasized how it should be an entirely uncoerced choice.
How many women do you speak to casually about this sort of thing?
Hmm, I can see where women who disproportionately listen to, and believe, false propaganda about "how exhausting motherhood is" and haven't tried it, could be averse to taking on such a vocation. And nobody should be verbally abused about anything. It's a woman's prerogative to decide not to be a wife or mother. She doesn't need to engage in sexual relationships.
And women are pressured to enter the workforce; in fact they're forced to take extensive education, enter the workforce, and to establish a career, and all that takes effort and resources that won't be invested in motherhood or family. So, it's understandable that women rarely hear about the joys of permanent, fruitful, faithful matrimony and motherhood, and that the prevailing winds should whisper into a woman's ear that motherhood is a drag, pregnancy is a horrific experience you'll never recover from, and the best thing to do is not let yourself be weighed down by the bonds of love and intimacy with a husband or children.
It's weird you simultaneously say "its a woman's prerogative to decide not to be a wife or a mother" but also describe them as "...who listen to propaganda.." or "...the prevailing winds should whisper into a woman's ear...". Does she get to make her own decisions, fully educated on what is right for her, or does she not?
I never said pregnancy is a disease, or that motherhood is a drag. I said I've spoken with mothers who have said motherhood should be uncoerced. I said I know women who have chosen not to have children and have needed to escape verbal abuse from people who pressure them, and I hope the ability to have children without a woman involved will societally lessen the pressure women have to be mothers. I want the only people who are mothers are people who want to be mothers, not people who feel that just because they are a woman they must also become a mother. This leads to really painful, desperately sad places psychologically for women who are infertile, have miscarriages, or lose their fertility through the natural aging process.
In point of fact, both men and women hunt (and always hunted) in hunter-gatherer societies, which were generally much more egalitarian than evopsych just-so stories would have you believe. Just one recent article that cites some studies: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/07/01/1184749...
We truly do live in an incredible time. The first human immune to aging has likely already been born. Hypothetically, given enough luck, an immortal human probably walks among us. We're that close to being able to genetically modify everything.
Also, although I'm not sure that I understand this completely, it seems to me that this isn't quite a new development. For example, here's a 2016 paper claiming to do something very similar [1] (with the additional step of transplanting the human cells into mice): https://www.spandidos-publications.com/10.3892/mmr.2016.5191
[1]: From the 2016 paper: "In the present study, human iPSCs were induced to differentiate into ovarian granulosa-like cells (OGLCs) in vitro. Subsequently, these cells were transplanted into POF mice."