Coming soon: Planet of the Women

This is scary: The Independent has a story on research that hints at a way for women to produce their own sperm, from their bone marrow, and thereby take men out of the reproductive cycle entirely. Yikes.

The study reportedly appears in the journal Reproduction: Gamete Biology, and although I can't find it yet, Karim Nayernia of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne has been working and publishing on this sort of thing for a while, having already found that male gametes derived from embryonic stem-cells in male mice can give rise to viable offspring. Now Nayernia's team has done it in female mice.

"Our next goal is to see if we can get the spermatagonial stem cells to progress to mature sperm in the laboratory and this should take around three to five years of experiments," Professor Nayernia said.

Phew. So at least we men have got a few years to get our affairs in order before we're declared redundant.

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I can get the spiders. But I can't reach the light bulbs.

If you can produce your own sperm and fertilize yourself, haven't you basically cloned yourself?

Planet of the Women already here. At least in the developed world.

I can see it coming now..ERA for men. The men's movement. Porn for everybody

how strange. i was hust reading brayton's blog on canada apologists for gay marriage and some nutbar replies by dk, and i was thinking what if women can self reproduce and jesus really was born of a virgin. i wonder if that is possible... thanks for answering that for me- lol.

By impatientpatient (not verified) on 13 Apr 2007 #permalink