Scientists Create “Synthetic Human Embryos”

According to The Guardian, scientists have created synthetic human embryos utilizing stem cells and without the need for eggs or sperm.

It’s another step into transhumanism to make humans obsolete in a dystopian world.

Synthetic human embryos created in groundbreaking advance https://t.co/hMEAeVaaYw

— Theflowernurse (@theflowernurse) June 15, 2023

The scientists claim the research could provide insight on “genetic disorders and the biological causes of recurrent miscarriage.”

However, the research violates many ethical boundaries.

Scientists create synthetic human embryos, eliminating need for sperm and eggs, thereby raising major ethical concerns https://t.co/aI6DmHPWfW

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) June 15, 2023

From The Guardian:

The structures do not have a beating heart or the beginnings of a brain, but include cells that would typically go on to form the placenta, yolk sac and the embryo itself.

ADVERTISEMENT

Prof Magdalena Żernicka-Goetz, of the University of Cambridge and the California Institute of Technology, described the work in a plenary address on Wednesday at the International Society for Stem Cell Research’s annual meeting in Boston.

“We can create human embryo-like models by the reprogramming of [embryonic stem] cells,” she told the meeting.

There is no near-term prospect of the synthetic embryos being used clinically. It would be illegal to implant them into a patient’s womb, and it is not yet clear whether these structures have the potential to continue maturing beyond the earliest stages of development.

The motivation for the work is for scientists to understand the “black box” period of development that is so called because scientists are only allowed to cultivate embryos in the lab up to a legal limit of 14 days. They then pick up the course of development much further along by looking at pregnancy scans and embryos donated for research.

Robin Lovell-Badge, the head of stem cell biology and developmental genetics at the Francis Crick Institute in London, said: “The idea is that if you really model normal human embryonic development using stem cells, you can gain an awful lot of information about how we begin development, what can go wrong, without having to use early embryos for research.”

Żernicka-Goetz’s team and Israel’s Weizmann Institute previously worked on stem cells from mice to assemble into “early embryo-like structures with an intestinal tract, the beginnings of a brain and a beating heart.”

Scientists are currently in a race to advance this work into human models.

At the conference, Zernicka-Goetz described “cultivating the embryos to a stage just beyond the equivalent of 14 days of development for a natural embryo,” the outlet noted.

GB News reacted to The Guardian’s article:

🗞 Scientists create synthetic human embryos in stem cell breakthrough 🗞@TheSimonEvans, @JoshxHowie & @NickDixonComic react to the front page of the Guardian 🗞 pic.twitter.com/MUlWOgtoKo

— GB News (@GBNEWS) June 14, 2023

Cont. from The Guardian:

The model structures, each grown from a single embryonic stem cell, reached the beginning of a developmental milestone known as gastrulation, when the embryo transforms from being a continuous sheet of cells to forming distinct cell lines and setting up the basic axes of the body. At this stage, the embryo does not yet have a beating heart, gut or beginnings of a brain, but the model showed the presence of primordial cells that are the precursor cells of egg and sperm.

“Our human model is the first three-lineage human embryo model that specifies amnion and germ cells, precursor cells of egg and sperm,” Żernicka-Goetz told the Guardian before the talk. “It’s beautiful and created entirely from embryonic stem cells.”

The development highlights how rapidly the science in this field has outpaced the law, and scientists in the UK and elsewhere are already moving to draw up voluntary guidelines to govern work on synthetic embryos. “If the whole intention is that these models are very much like normal embryos, then in a way they should be treated the same,” Lovell-Badge said. “Currently in legislation they’re not. People are worried about this.”