Matt Krisiloff, chief executive officer of Conception Biosciences, has dozens of scientists working at a lab in Berkeley, Calif., trying to make eggs outside ovaries. Such a technique could allow women to have biological children later in life.
Krisiloff, who is gay, says the technology, known as in vitro gametogenesis or IVG, could also help male couples have biological children without anyone else’s genes.
If the scientists succeed in developing lab eggs, it will still require experiments to determine if the eggs are good enough or safe enough to create babies, says Katie Hasson of the Center for Genetics and Society.
“The only way now to know if the embryo will develop the way it is supposed to develop is to make an embryo and see how it develops,” she says.
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Researchers are already interviewing people who might benefit from using lab-generated eggs or sperm, and they are starting to think through some of the dilemmas, says Anne Le Goff, a philosopher at UCLA studying the ethics of IVG. Such advances could require new ways of thinking about parenthood, she says.
“You won’t need to know who the mother or the father is on a birth certificate,” says [philosopher Anne] Le Goff. “You can just put down the names of the parents.”
