Depending upon your political persuasion, Hillary Clinton is either famous or infamous for popularizing the concept that it takes a village to raise a child. Taking the village’s influence back to the point of conception, Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART), specifically a potential novel combination of human Induced Pluripotential Stem Cells (hiPSCs) and in vitro gametogenesis (IVG), just might make it possible for that same village (that is, more than two parents) to actually make the child.
Jon Holmlund has written extensively in this blog regarding both the technique and ethical considerations of hiPSC and more recently human extended pluripotential stem cells (hESCs) (e.g. see here for a recent example). Roughly, hiPSCs/hESCs create stem cells (cells that have the potential to become any other cell in the human body) from common cells such as adult skin cells. IVG is the process that has the potential to change the hiPSCs/hESCs into gametes (eggs and sperm) which then can be combined via in vitro fertilization (IVF) to make a baby. If the process can be reliably perfected in humans, there would be no physical barrier for a single individual, non-fertile heterosexual couple, homosexual couple, or frankly any number of people to have a baby that is his/her/their genetic offspring (see summary here for ethical arguments fully supportive of these techniques and here for legal arguments both pro and con). We have already crossed into the concept of group parenting with maternal spindle cell transfer used to prevent mitochondrial disease (the so-called three parent babies). With IVG, we needn’t stop at just three parents (from the Palacios-Gonzalez et.
The views, opinions and positions expressed by these authors and blogs are theirs and do not necessarily represent that of the Bioethics Research Library and Kennedy Institute of Ethics or Georgetown University.