I think time will tell. It's good news in general, but until we see how it's actually used, we won't know what kind of societal impact it will have. We'll also have to see how babies conceived using this artificial sperm compare to babies conceived naturally.
As far as I know, the age of the biological father at conception has little to do with the health of the baby, so the issue with accelerated aging in clones shouldn't be an issue. I shouldn't comment much further on this, though, with the presence of actual experts.
As the law stands right now, creating any form of life or fertility treatment through cloning or atificial sperm is illegal and will stay that way, it will need a primary legislation to change it but seeing women can have IVF. Shouldn't men also be able to eventually get access to the same treatment? Infertility of men has been slowly increasing.
I share Harry Guerilla's concerns that this will lead to increasing infertility rates in the species, and help propagate genetic defects that will inhibit our ability to reproduce without artificial assistance. Of course, the same concerns present themselves with older forms of fertility assistance, but this seems like a much greater form of assistance.
Then again, it would prove a boon to men who have been sterilized by injury or environmental factors. Not to mention, the possibilities that it opens up for lesbian couples, who would be able to raise children who are biologically descended from both. After all, I don't believe there is any fundamental difference in male and female
skin that would make one suitable for the creation of artificial sperm and the other not.
I think the law should be amended if needed for the scientists to research and more power given to the independent body to regulate and enforce the rules.
Personally, I say let them play. There's no real danger from these technologies unless they're released on the mass market before they're fully developed; as long as all of the experiments are confined to a laboratory setting, they're not capable of creating any problem that can't be solved by a couple of hard men with shotguns.
I'm not going to be greatly concerned until they're ready to start using this technology on a governmental or consumer scale.
But those against this have been out in force on BBC and SKY saying we are going down a no go zone and playing God
Heh. If God didn't want us playing with his toys, why'd he leave them in the sandbox where we could find them? Any god that doesn't look on with pride as we try to transcend our limitations isn't worthy of worship, in my opinion.
Can we prevent tyrants from cloning themselves or governments from growing "super-soldiers." What about the effects from such work on people's psyche?
No sense trying to stop tyrants from making clones of themselves. It's just a costly and inefficient form of reproduction, and most tyrants are perfectly capable of reproducing with a little natural assistance anyway.
I actually look forward to "super soldiers". Unless they're being deliberately designed for "benefits" such as being too dumb to question orders-- which is better accomplished through indoctrination-- they'll end up being an improvement over baseline humanity in numerous capacities. Unless the government sterilizes their stormtroopers, those improvements will eventually leak out into the general populace.
Can you explain a little more what you're worried about, in regards to the effects on people's psyche?
There are numerous ethical questions to this work. However, if it is maintained and used for medical good, then science has performed it's job.
How do you define "medical good", though? Is it only the prevention and treatment of disease, or do you include enhancement as "medical good"? It seems that too many people are obsessed with maintaining the genetic
status quo in our species, despite how this flies in the face of natural development. They seem to view our species as the pinnacle of evolution, or at least as the "natural" form from which all deviation is an error.
... and the experimenting labs would have be carefully monitored because living experiments that "fail" are still humans, and that lab is responsible for the lifetime care and support of their mistakes when they begin playing with human development.
There's no more reason for this than there is to implant every single zygote conceived in the process of performing IVF for an infertile couple.
