r/transhumanism • u/Ok_Vehicle_7005 • Sep 15 '26
Am I onto something?
Okay, so out of a feminine rage after writing about Medusa for a world history report, I was scrolling through Pinterest when I saw a video talking about how the male chromosomes will one day go extinct.
I went down a rabbit hole of asexual reproduction and cloning before I had a thought...
If we could somehow control the way malignant cancerous cells develop, then maybe we could use that to grow grow a human embryo without sperm or male genes.
That's just a thought though and I wanted to see if I'm just crazy or if someone gets where I'm coming from.
Edit: I am just a high schooler who knows nothing, so pls correct me if I'm wrong (which y'all have already been doing lol) 😂
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u/_azazel_keter_ Sep 15 '26
we already have that tech, but why would we do that?
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u/Ok_Vehicle_7005 Sep 15 '26
Just out of curiosity in the moment and wanted to share the thought. And what technology?
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u/lemons_of_doubt 1 Sep 16 '26
We can already take a regular cell from a woman do stuff to it and use it to fertilize an egg. In theory.
It's just a lot of cost and work when men make sperm for free.
Still cool though.
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u/Queen_Of_Alts 26d ago
There are also legal barriers to any experiments involving humans.
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u/ColdButCozy 26d ago
True, but it works in animals. Dolly the sheep was basically cloned that way. Though direct cloning seems to carry risks because lifetime accumulated genetic damage, including telomere damage as a result of cell division is passed on in the methods im familiar with atleast, leading the clone to essentially being genetically as old as the original at the moment the sample it was created from was taken. This shortens lifespan and generally makes the clone more susceptible to age related diseases.
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Sep 16 '26
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u/ImaginaryTower2873 1 Sep 16 '26
Recently this was demonstrated with human stem cells (a big step forward from mice! reproductory tech often works slightly different in humans and mice, despite us all being mammals). The human demonstration is not yet complete (they did not get the last two stages of gametogenesis to work), but it looks like it is getting close. As a gay man I am looking forward to the possibility of having a biological kid with my husband. (Still need a surrogate mother or an in vitro womb, obviously).
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u/Queen_Of_Alts 26d ago
I did hear there were scientists who were able to make sperm cells out of bone marrow, so in theory we could allow humans to reproduce without males, but there are lots of legal barriers to any experiments involving humans, and it isn't considered necessary since there's no shortage of sperm cells.
I think it'd be more useful to develop artificial wombs since that would allow females to reproduce without having to go through pregnancy, and allow individuals to have way more kids than they could the natural way.
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u/Emeris4017 26d ago
Definitely agree with you about artificial wombs, pregnancy sounds like such a nightmare with all the potential complications. "Genomic Imprinting" is a very interesting topic, and also illustrates a reason why making children without donor material from both sexes is a bit more of a task than you'd think.
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u/ColdButCozy 26d ago
I assume they do that by making the cells regress to stem cells then redifferentiate as sperm cells. Problem with that is, id also assume that the cells would retain any genetic damage they’ve accumulated, unlike ordinary reproductive cells, leading to many of the complications associated with cloning.
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u/Awesomeone1029 Sep 16 '26
There was a troupe of baboons where all the shittiest males died from eating bad trash, and future generations were less aggressive. Remove the societal reinforcement and the patriarchy will dissolve.
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u/Hunter62610 Sep 16 '26
I have heard of people experimenting with non sperm reproduction for couples without the ability to conceive the normal route. (Trying to be inclusive but I honestly can't find a way to include every scenario fairly.)
May I ask about the Medusa stuff? That sounds interesting.
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u/WanderingTony 4 Sep 16 '26
Basically what you look for is just cloning.
No it doesn't use cancerous cells bcs they are sort of too messed up on genetic level (Google "HeLa cells". They are biologically immortal and evergrowing/everdividing but obviously not growing a lady out of them or even an uterus for that effect. Despite its solidly a cancerous tissue of a woman's uterus. Control them such way they actually grow a lady back out of them, well, we are far from there. Like, seriously far. Tho, take it with a grain of salt. As having diploma in neural models and AI back in 2015 I was saying we are far from what ChatGPT shows today and biology is rather a hobby of mine and not a field I have diploma in) but rather an ovocyte as a substrate and genetic material, nucleus of a somatic cell, skin, blood, whatever, usually from a fetus bcs it still has response to signals for division. Cells in general use Ca+ ion as ionic chemical signaler. In muscle tissue its used either to force muscle to relax or do it automatically if ATP of a cell is exhausted and cellular calcium pump pumping calcium out of cell fails. In heart its even more complex like bcs there is calcumium, magnesium and potassium as antagonist in play. In neurons its used to create delay of dignal transmission after being signalled/emitting mediator and calcium surge inside due to cell being stressed.
In ovocytes, sperm not only delivers its genes but also triggers massive Ca+ surge stressing ovocyte and triggering division. When nucleus is put artificially this doesn't happen. Tho its possible to recreate process artificially with chemicals and electromagnetic field recreating ion flux and to artificial response nuclei of a fetus is way more responsive.
To not use a surrogate mother and avoid pregnancy there are some artificial womb projects. There is a post on this sub with an attempt to grow a lamb in an artificial womb. Tech exists and gives fair results, but not robust and developed enough to set it anywhere near humans to avoid a big perventage of children with fetal disorders. Also I dunno about application of a tech as its now in general to fund its further development. Maybe thats time to save pandas, I dunno?
There are models of growing embryo purely out of stem cells in artificial wombs but the issue is not technical but ethical and legal. Its a world government conspiracy but somehow major countries capable of experimenting with such tech unanimously banning synthetic human embryo and fetus experiments on real living tissues. And life experiment ofc can be pretty different from models. We can't know for sure unfoftunately.
Tho fairly ethical issue of processing experiments results, essentially potential babies, likely often with notable development deviations is there and pretty real.
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u/Anen-o-me Sep 16 '26
Both sexes will ultimately be able to reproduce without the other. And tech will prevent the y chromosome from dying out.
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Sep 16 '26
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u/mysterious_mystery2 26d ago
No, you are not. What are you speaking about is Eugenics. Plus maybe genoside
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u/Emeris4017 26d ago
Eugenics? Genocide? In the Y-chromosome degeneration theory, the Y-chromosome isn't vanishing because "men will go extinct", rather, most of the important genes for male development are tucked away elsewhere. No one is being killed, no one is being prevented from reproducing, to cause the Y-chromosome's slow disappearance. However, the evidence behind this theory isn't very strong, and the trend that sparked the theory is on a very vast timescale. Here, this info is so easy to find, it's even on the Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_chromosome
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