Scientists Play God: Lab Creates Synthetic Human Embryos Without Egg or Sperm
“7-week embryo” by lunar caustic is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Scientists reportedly created synthetic human embryos without the use of egg or sperm, a development that crosses an unsettling ethical boundary and raises significant questions about the consequences of such research.
Professor Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, a professor at the California Institute of Technology, elucidated the experiment at the annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research.
“Our human model is the first … human embryo model that specifies amnion and germ cells, precursor cells of egg and sperm,” Zernicka-Goetz told the Guardian.
“It’s beautiful and created entirely from embryonic stem cells,” she added.
She elaborated on the technique of generating human embryo-like models by reprogramming embryonic stem cells,
