SOMETIMES a technology seems so riddled with potential problems you wonder
why its creators began developing it. At first glance, the news that scientists
are trying to create eggs and sperm out of run-of-the-mill body cells looks like
a glaring example
(see “Birth of a miracle”).
The idea is to enable women who cannot produce eggs or men with no sperm to
have children of their own courtesy of, say, a simple skin cell. So far, it
hasn’t gone beyond a few animal experiments. And the number of things that could
go wrong is vast. Real sperm and eggs…
