Planet of the women

The sperm you thought you could not do without for procreation might soon be reduced to a quaint, rarely used option. Science seems hellbent on making men totally redundant in the process of making babies.

Researchers worldwide are experimenting with embryos formed from two sets of genetically-altered female eggs. Already, Kayuga, a Japanese mouse, has come out of a not-so-romantic union of eggs from two female mice in a laboratory in Tokyo. She isn’t a clone in that she has two distinct sets of DNA from her two female parents.

“Mice and humans aren’t the same, but they are mammals. And today scientists can take two eggs and create a child. They have to take the eggs out, change them, and put them back. But it’s possible to do. And if it’s possible in mice, theoretically, it will be possible in humans,” says Aarathi Prasad, UK-based geneticist and author of Like A Virgin: The Science Of A Sexless Future.

In the sixteenth century, before we knew anatomy and reproduction in as much detail as we do now, physicians and philosophers alike believed that man was the creator of human beings, and thatwomen were only the ‘vessels’ in which babies grew, Prasad writes in her book. Even Aristotle believed this. Today, we can laugh at their folly, but it’s quite possible that future generations will look back in wonder at our ignorance of asexual reproduction. This, in scientific jargon is parthenogenesis, where an unfertilised ovum develops into an embryo.

No little boys

Imagine then a world without men. Only women as Presidents and Prime Ministers, judges and doctors, automobile mechanics and scientists. Where women will have babies with other women to produce more women. Yes, female genes have only the X chromosome. And the sex of the child depends on the Y chromosome that comes from the father. So with men taken out of the reproduction cycle, there can’t be little boys being born, only little girls. But when girls can procreate with girls, who needs little boys?

Evolution too supports asexual reproduction. Female Komodo dragons, for instance, normally lay unfertilised eggs which are later fertilised by the male of the species, like chicken. However, when separated from males, Komodo dragons can lay fertilised eggs to enable the species to survive.

These concepts may seem outrageous now, but they may not seem as strange in the future. “This is because society’s changing, law is changing and families are changing. There was a time when lesbians weren’t allowed to use sperm banks. Now, they are. Our kids and their kids might not look at things the same way as we do. In fact, they might look back and laugh at us,” says Prasad.

A matter of choice

But is it ethical or even ‘natural’ to modify genes and do away with sexual reproduction?

“People say it’s not natural. But if you have heart disease and you need a pacemaker, you wouldn’t say ‘no, that’s not natural’. And if your baby’s born prematurely, it should die. But you put it in an incubator, it lives, and nobody’s going to say that’s a bad thing. For women whose bodies start deteriorating after they hit menopause at age 50, you say ‘oh, it’s all right’. But it’s not all right. Why should it be? I think allthese interventions — eggs generated from stem cells, sperm generated from bone marrow, better ways of freezing eggs, artificial wombs — are good if the future gives women a lot of options,” says Prasad.

Same-sex reproduction will also give lesbian couples the choice of having their own children without depending on donor sperm.
Inspired by this logic, Canadian filmmaker Alison Reid decided to make The Baby Formula. This 2008 film is about a lesbian couple who want to have each other’s babies. Athena and Lilith find out about an experimental treatment that can make sperm cells from their own stem cells, and they decide to give it a try. The film revolves around how the couple deals with their families’ shock and disbelief.

For sure, it’s hard to imagine the various ways in which such a possibility might impact society at large. There will be ethical, legal, and medical questions to ponder if we have the option to do away with sex.  For example, will the genetic modifications cause abnormalities in the long run?

According to Prasad, in evolutionary terms, “sex is not designed to benefit the individual, it is designed to benefit the population. That is why it became such a popular strategy in nature.”

But, she adds, “Men and women considering having a family will likely be thinking more about the individual benefits, costs, and consequences than the survival of the species. So, if humans had the option of reproducing without sex, would we do it that way?”
Depressing as the idea may be, there is just a chance that men will become like dinosaurs: extinct.