Imagine you are Brad Pitt. After you stay one night in the Ritz, someone sneaks in and collects some skin cells from your pillow.
But that’s not all. Using a novel fertility technology, your movie star cells are transformed into sperm and used to make a baby. And now someone is suing you for millions in child support.
Such a seemingly bizarre scenario could actually be possible, say three senior medical researchers who today have chosen to alert the public to the social risks of in vitro gametogenesis, a technique they say could allow any type of cell to be reprogrammed into a sperm or egg.
The technology has already been demonstrated in mice by Japanese scientists and is likely to be extended to humans soon, according to the authors of an editorial in Science Translational Medicine, who warn that it could open a Pandora’s box of “vexing policy challenges” and ethical dilemmas.
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