Word: eggs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...eventually be able to abandon sexual reproduction entirely. That startling and perhaps unwelcome possibility has been demonstrated by Dr. J.B. Gurdon of Britain's Oxford University. Taking an unfertilized egg cell from an African clawed frog, Gurdon destroyed its nucleus by ultraviolet radiation, replacing it with the nucleus of an intestinal cell from a tadpole of the same species. The egg, discovering that it had a full set of chromosomes, instead of the half set found in unfertilized eggs, responded by beginning to divide as if it had been normally fertilized. The result was a tadpole that was the genetic...
Another prospect is to alter genes so that babies will be born with rote knowledge?language skills, multiplication tables?just as birds apparently emerge from the egg with genetic programs that enable them to navigate. Some researchers hope to develop shared consciousness among several minds, thus pooling intellectual resources...
...deeper ethical and practical objections to cloning. The process could be used, for example, to allow a woman to produce a child without passing on her own or her mate's defective gene. A cell nucleus from the genetically sound parent could be substituted for the nucleus in her egg. But even that quite reasonable application could introduce a novel set of complications. Would the cloned child develop a sibling rivalry with its biological parent? Would he face a severe identity crisis, being someone else's "duplicate"? Beyond such considerations, a number of scientists and ethicists would list cloning among...
...form of humanity": the family. Ramsey thinks that artificial insemination by a donor, which is already fairly common, has opened the door to further invasions of family integrity. In his recent book Fabricated Man, he mentions other possible developments: artificial inovulation (the "prenatal" adoption of someone else's fertilized egg), "women hiring mercenaries to bear their children," and "babies produced in hatcheries." Beyond finding some of the possibilities repellent, Ramsey argues that they violate "covenant-fidelity," a bond of spiritual and physical faithfulness, between wife and husband or parent and child...
...fresh flexibility in the family structure. He favors host mothers (Ramsey's "mercenaries") because some women want children but cannot carry them to term. In an opposite way, artificial inovulation could be the means for a sterile mother to bear a child, even if not from her own egg. But he draws the line at artificial wombs, which, he says, "would produce nothing but psychological monsters." Others emphasize that the family itself must survive to fill important psychological needs. Molecular Biologist Leon Kass, who left the research labs to become executive secretary of the National Academy of Science's Committee...