Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Scientists Take A Step Closer To Creating Human Eggs In A Lab Dish Using Stem Cells
The Washington Post: The 'Game-Changing’ Technique To Create Babies From Skin Cells Just Stepped Forward
Scientists in Japan made progress recently in the quest to combat infertility, creating the precursor to a human egg cell in a dish from nothing but a woman’s blood cells. The research is an important step toward what scientists call a “game-changing” technology that has the potential to transform reproduction. The primitive reproductive cell the scientists created is not a mature egg, and it cannot be fertilized to create an embryo. But researchers have already created eggs out of mouse tail cells and fertilized them to produce viable pups, so outside scientists said the research is on track to one day achieve human “in vitro gametogenesis” — a method of creating eggs and sperm in a dish. (Johnson, 9/20)
NPR: Japanese Researchers Create Immature Human Eggs From Stem Cells
"For the first time, scientists have been able to convincingly demonstrate that we are able to make eggs — very immature eggs," says Amanda Clark, a developmental biologist at UCLA who wasn't involved in the research. The technique might someday help millions of people suffering from infertility because of cancer treatments or other reasons, Clark says.But the prospect of being able to mass-produce human eggs in labs raises a host of societal and ethical issues. (Stein, 9/20)
