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  • Essay / Gene editing as a possibility for same-sex parents to have children

    Will humans be able to modify our genes to reduce the risk of transmitting certain genetic anomalies from generation to generation, or will they be able to -they give the same- do sexual couples have the possibility of having their own genetic children?Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get the original essay Gene editing has been the basis of many science fiction films such as Gattaca, a film in which science has advanced to the point where children are conceived through genetic selection in order to give parents the healthy child they desire, and films like the X-men franchise where mutants exist both due to experiments and biological Darwinism. However, genetic modification is not only about changing the genes of humans or animals, genetic modification also includes plants; an example of this would be editing plant genomes to advance crop transformation. Every day, new advances are made in gene editing, and therefore new possibilities emerge thanks to these advances; such as the possibility of same-sex parents having their own genetic children. An example of progress in the field of gene editing comes from China. A group of scientists has successfully modified the genetics of same-sex mouse parents to allow them to give birth to their own genetic children. This advancement means that eventually, same-sex couples could have their own children without resorting to artificial insemination or surrogacy. Reproduction by parthenogenesis or gynogenesis exists in vertebrates such as fish, reptiles and amphibians but it does not exist in mammals. The article states that "in the 1980s, elegant pronuclear transplantation experiments performed by the Solter and Surani laboratories suggested that mouse development required both maternal and paternal contributions, implying the presence of genetic asymmetries of two parental chromosomes”. The experiment attempted to create both bimaternal mice, mice with two female parents, and bipaternal mice, mice with two male parents. In order to create healthy young people, researchers had to remove locations in their genetics using “molecular scissors” known as CRISPR-Cas9. In bimaternal mice, they removed three locations and in bipaternal mice, they removed seven locations. After this step, the researchers moved the modified cells into an unaltered immature egg for the female mice, then implanted the egg into a substitute so that it could develop. Creating bipaternal mice in this experiment was more difficult than creating an embryo. there must be an egg. For male mice, researchers injected sperm and stem cells into an immature egg cell stripped of its nucleus. In order for the modified egg to grow, they had to encourage its growth outside the uterus before implanting it into a surrogate mother. The difficulty of creating bipaternal children is not only present in experiment where laboratory fertilization techniques are present, but the successful reproduction of two males in nature is extremely rare and can only be found in some fish in experimental conditions. Once the experiment was concluded, 29 healthy pups were born, these pups lived to adulthood and even had their own offspring; however, 210 embryos were used at.