Startup aims to make lab-grown human eggs from anyone's cells

"Some fertility issues are a sort of quality control system for our species."

I am not discounting your argument, but quality isn't a stable value. A short-sighted or asthmatic person in a hunter-gatherer society might have been useless; nowadays, they may be an excellent engineer or doctor.

With technology like the one being described in the article, you actually have a much higher chance of producing viable embryos free of known genetic problems.

Dependence on technology, well, it is sorta dangerous, but also unavoidable. For example, the # of people who produce their own food is very small in the West. And that small number would become almost zero if we added further constraints (as in "don't use any industrially produced chemicals in the process").

Our ancestors from 200 years ago would probably consider us unviable.

(And the actual hunters and gatherers would consider them unviable. What, you depend on good weather and rain not to starve?)

If we put all-natural you, with no products of technology, at a random point on Earth, you'll be dead before the search party finds you.

By the same argument you could also argue that certain genetic traits are part of the "quality control system". E.g. Before the modern era having a gene that makes you disabled would lower your chance of reproduction.

This is an extremely dangerous path to set out on.

We have already completely changed human evolution, and I would argue with great success. Do we really want to start undoing this?

Biologically a healthy woman can have kids well into her 50s and even 60s yet her eggs reserve starts to deplete the moment they are born, accelerating exponentially as they approach 40.

From an evolutionary point of view this could have made sense 200 years ago when the lifespan of a human was 45 years.

Our bodies are not perfect and we have been able to understand and to certain degree fix many issues with it such as infectious and cardiovascular diseases and some types of cancers.

For example we never saw polio as a quality control system for our species.

Our understanding of infertility and methods to treat it have remained unchanged for decades.

We basically pump an awful amount of drugs into a woman's body hoping to harvest a few good eggs via surgery.

It is a brutal and painful process, physically, emotionally and financially that most times has very poor odds of succeeding.

If we can do the same with a few drops of blood, removing the drugs, the cost and the randomness of the current procedures while increasing the odds 10x, this would be an amazing feat of science in a positive way.

There is an growing body of evidence that points to change in environmental conditions (ubiquity of microplastics, forever chemicals, etc.) as a significant driver of infertility. I guess you could make the argument that humans just need to adapt or die. It seems a little Victorian. "Then they should do it and reduce the surplus population" kind of thing. Say no to your inner Scrooge. Life is sad and hard and complicated and exciting and wonderful and absolutely worth living. Babies are wonderful, children are hard, teenagers are a nightmare, and I absolutely don't want to die alone.

Millions of years of biology have brought us nearly to the point where we can take the evolution of our species into our own hands. We're new at this and like any other human endeavor in its earliest days are bound to make some horrible mistakes. So the arguments toward caution are well-justified.

We've yet to prove our civilization is responsible enough to handle such consequential abilities - e.g. nuclear arms, climate change, genetic engineering.

But I anticipate several generations from now, today's cultural taboo will be ancient history and our "meddling", "treatments", whatever you label it will be just another aspect of humanity that has been normalized. I bet my progeny will be able to go and get a tail just as easily as someone today would acquire a tattoo.

"Perhaps new humans have a right not to be produced"

The problem is asserting such right on behalf of someone not yet born. Personally, I couldn't just demand that someone not be born because of my own opinions regarding technology. I just don't feel justified to deny other people procreation.

And remember, in the 1980s, there were similar attitudes towards "regular" IVF. Frankenstein, ungodly, lab kids etc. Fortunately these prejudices mostly died out.

Though obviously it could be no other way, it's always struck me as odd that new humans can never consent to their creation, no matter the method. One of many reasons I will never create one.

Imagine the situation when a well-meaning celebrity donates blood, someone unscrupulous steals a vial of it, and, a year later ... that poor guy has several hundred kids and is actually their mother.

Could be done, if you have a reliable method of turning human white blood cells back to stem cells and then to ova.

Diabetes is as old as humanity, up until a century ago it was death sentence. Our living standards have caused people to live where earlier they would have died. Here we are allowing people to reproduce where otherwise they would not be able to. All of this is a good thing.

Do you mean "myopia"? Yeah, it is a civilizational disease, but from a sufferer: it is very much bearable and tolerable.

I surely wouldn't like to play some sort of eugenic match against people who would rather either stop civilization in its track or prevent myopic people like me from existence for their own good, or ban them from doing anything that could possibly cause myopia in them.

People suffered all sorts of aftereffects from civilizational progress, but I am optimistic in the sense that we can eventually conquer them and next generations may enjoy all the benefits without suffering harms.

You are right, healthcare improvements have translated into enormous slowdown of generation exchange on the top.

The average age of CEOs of the largest 500 companies in the world at hire has grown 14 years between 2005-2019 [0], i.e. no generation exchange at all.

Looking at the American politics, the combined age of Trump and Biden exceeded 150 in the last election, first such event in American history. Given that they both may be running again ... oh, well.

And in the Czech presidential election, the winner (61 y.o., with a grandfatherly gray mane) defeated a 68-y.o. challenger.

Putin is over 70, Xi is over 70, the Pope is over 80, the freshly crowned British king only stopped being "prince" at 74.

Now add some more longevity progress onto the table and the once-famously geriatric Brezhnev politburo may start looking like a kindergarten. I can definitely see some members of the American Senate or SCOTUS exceeding 100 by 2050.

[0] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/01/ce...

>A big part of that is rising life expectancy. I'm 31, and my parents (probably and hopefully) won't die until I'm 60+ myself - which means unlike the generation prior to mine that had a reasonable hope of inheriting some wealth as a kickstarter (i.e. a downpayment or a place to live without having to pay shitloads in rent), I and many others of my generation will not have that.

I'm of a similar age as you but I don't see how that is any different than the previous generation?

I think it is mostly a matter of coordination.

It is much easier to develop a new fertilization technology than to get 150+ countries of the world to agree (and actually implement that agreement) that they will limit schooling of their youth and give them career opportunities sooner, so that their fertility rises.

I wasn't talking about eastern Europe.