Ooh, it's like GATTACA! Kind of. Ehh, maybe not. Anyways...

Let me pre-extinguish the flame wars by noting that should this procedure ever prove viable for humans, we feminists will not decide to kill all of the existing males, completely castrate them, and/or imprison them in the earth's core.

Just in case any of our wonderful commenters were thinking of suggesting as much.

Maybe this is all semantics, but I tend to think of "artificial" as being non-organic based. And since these sperm were organic based, wouldn't they be considered "engineered"? Probably a moot point.

A friend of mine wrote a weird (and pretty lousy) sci-fi novel about this very thing. He was, uh, an angry individual.

I choose to believe that people in general like sex too much to give it, or each other, up. It comforts me.

(Not trying to slur gay people there -- this whole thing is about asexual reproduction, and while gay sex dosen't reproduce, I still don't want it engineered out of the populace! It all links people together.)

Given that the planet is staggering and stumbling under the burden of the people already living on it, why are we so excited and enthusiastic about technology that will make more people?

I guess it's quality not quantity that counts

That's incredible progress, and I do imagine the kinks'll be worked out soon enough. Still, I hope it doesn't prematurally become something experimented with on humans. It would be unfair to any child concieved that way to force them to live through all these unasked for medical defects in the name of science.

So these scientists take an embryo that was made with sperm and an egg, to make sperm? Sort of seems silly to me, hey we have a viable embryo, lets take it apart to make the genetic basis to create, embryos! I'm all for science and stuff, but this just seems ridiculous, they took something apart, to create something that was already there? I thought the purpose of stem cell research was to help people with diseases that could be feasibly cured with new cells to replace the damaged ones.

I don't see how taking an embryo apart to make sperm cells translates into taking DNA from an infertile man's testicles and making sperm from them. They didn't take an adult mouses cells and make sperm, they did it with an embryo. It was taking something working apart to replicate the process, no wonder it didn't work that well.

I suppose I would be more understanding if they tried first to see if adult stem cells could be transformed into sperm cells in the first place.

"The notion that either sex could one day reproduce without the other is surely one of the most threatening out there."

Why? If I reproduce I plan to do so with my wife, but the notion that in the not-too-distant future reproduction without both sexes involved doesn't seem threatening to me. Inevitable, I think, would be a better description. As long as the science is sound [read: no kids born with lungs on the outside, etc.], I don't see a problem here. Ethical rules governing the creation of sperm and ova shouldn't be too difficult to craft.

Only not as boring, I hope.

"Given that the planet is staggering and stumbling under the burden of the people already living on it, why are we so excited and enthusiastic about technology that will make more people?"

Indeed, especially considering that an estimated 100 million of those people are orphaned children.

Speak for yourself. And the idea of men reproducing without women or women reproducing without men is "perverse"? Any other loaded words you feel like throwing out there? "Freakish"? "Against Nature"? "A desecration of God's Will"? Especially 'cause someone might think you're calling homosexuals perverse and I'm sure that's not what you mean to say. Is it?

Broadsheet is so far to the left regarding a woman's right to her reproductive health...so how can you possibly give a flying fauxfuck about someone else's right to use their womb as they see fit, even if it is to implant lab-created sperm?

"For the first time we have created life using artificial sperm."

And all this time I thought that if there's one thing the world's got plenty of, it's sperm.

How about increasing the availablity and production of low-cost protein sources, vaccines or at the very least good chocolate?

guess what? either sex can already reproduce without the other. Sperm banks. egg donors, egg banks, surrogates.

What if you had cancer at age 7 or so and could not father a baby of your own when you grew up? What if someone could take spermatic stem cells isolated from your testes before you got chemotherapy and made them grow in the lab. Then you could be a dad from your own sperm.

those of you saying there are enough people already, I have two questions. Have you had your vasectomy yet? and how many children have you adopted yet? or do you just abstain???

It's easy to make rules for other people, just ask the american reproductive taliban that want to make birth control for women illegal.

Not being able to have a baby when you want one really bad causes great pain for some people. Rich people can already get treatments to help them have children. I applaud anything that helps bring reproductive treatments to normal working people. We should not be prohibited from having kids because we aren;t rich.

This hasn't been possible before although it was clear that it would be eventually.

Calling the possibility of reproduction that doesn't involve both sexes "our most perverse and monstrous desire" takes the prize. Of all the perverse, monstrous dseires that humanity has expressed throughout history... this one deserves the superlative? Ignoring all the monstrous desires fueled by greed, self-righteous fury, dehumanizing of others, lust for violence, warping of the human spirit... nah, none of that really matters. Genocide? Withholding life-saving pharmaceuticals? Casually ripping away the freedom and lives of countless people? You don't even need to have an agenda to open a history book and take your pick. But no... the idea that people might reproduce without a partner of the opposite sex, that's the most perverse and monstrous desire. Don't you read your own sentences? It's enough to crack your readers up.