http://www.mercola.com/2001/jun/13/ivf_chip.htm
The children of the future may be conceived and spend
their first few days of development on a computer-controlled chip.
In a move recalling Aldous Huxley’s famous production
lines for making babies in Brave New World, researchers in the US are building
a “chip” that can automatically carry out all the steps involved in IVF, from
fertilizing eggs to preparing embryos for implantation.
Ultimately, such devices - which amount to artificial
reproductive tracts - may even be able to sort and test embryos for genetic
flaws.
So far researchers David Beebe and Matthew Wheeler have
built prototypes that can carry out the major steps involved in IVF, though not
all on the same chip. Far more mouse embryos develop successfully on these
devices than by traditional methods.
The researchers say they expect the technology will first
be used for livestock production, but their eventual aim is to use it for human
embryos.
The work could be the first step towards a future in which
IVF becomes the norm, says George Seidel, a reproductive physiologist at
Colorado State University in Fort Collins.
“Fifty or 100 years from now, our in vitro procedures for
parts or even all of pregnancy may end up being safer than dealing with the
various things that occur in the body - in terms of viruses that the mother
comes across, toxins, and so on.”
In conventional IVF, sperm and eggs are dumped into a
Petri dish where the fertilized eggs grow until they’re ready to be implanted.
As embryos need different culture media at different stages, embryologists
transfer them from one dish to another via a pipette.
“It’s like being plucked out of the Atlantic Ocean and
stuck into the Pacific Ocean,” says Beebe, a biomedical engineer at the
University of Wisconsin, Madison.
So Beebe and Wheeler, an embryologist at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, designed a device to mimic conditions inside a
female’s reproductive tract.
The device, made of a transparent elastomer, resembles a
small glass slide and contains a network of tiny channels, each around 0.2
milliliters in depth and width. The researchers connect the channels to
programmable syringe pumps, which can move embryos around and add or remove
fluids.
To test the device, the team cultured mouse embryos to see
how many developed to the “blastocyst” stage, ready to be implanted.
“In 48 hours, in the traditional Petri dish, none of them
made it to the blastocyst stage. In our channels, about 75 per cent made it,”
says Beebe. “The embryos were
transplanted into hosts and live pups were born. So there doesn’t appear to be
any detrimental effect.”
The researchers also used the device to remove the “zona
pellucida” shell that encases early embryos. In human IVF, this “assisted
hatching” can be used to encourage implantation. Traditionally, the embryo is put
into an acid medium and quickly removed when the embryologist sees the zona
break up.
But waiting this long may damage the embryos. By washing
acid over mouse embryos “parked” in a microchannel on a chip, the team found
even with a brief exposure, the zona broke up after the acid was removed. “People
have been leaving embryos in the acid too long,” says Beebe.
In a separate experiment, the team matured mouse eggs
inside the channels, then fertilized them by squirting sperm over them. Eventually
they hope to integrate all the steps into a single artificial reproductive
tract.
Crucially, the chip-like device not only allows many
embryos to be cultured at once, it allows each one to be individually
manipulated and tracked in separate channels. That should make it easier to
weed out poor-quality embryos before implantation.
Embryologists already inspect embryos under the
microscope, and some IVF clinics also measure their consumption of oxygen and
glucose and the amount of carbon dioxide they release. All this could be done
more routinely on a reproductive chip, says Beebe.
In time, the device could even make it easier to carry out
pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, where a few cells are removed to screen
embryos for genetic disorders. “That involves more sophisticated manipulation
than our current devices can do. But it is something we are working on,” says
Beebe.
But quality control raises ethical issues, says Tom
Shakespeare of the Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Institute in
Newcastle.
“If we are talking about maximizing the chances of
becoming pregnant and carrying to term, then there’s less argument. But if we
are talking about either reducing genetic diversity or indeed enhancing
selection then there are major questions.”
It does appear that we are heading rapidly to Aldous
Huxley’s Brave New World where we will have the technology to produce babies on
demand.
From Christian Medical Association Executive Director
David Stevens, M.D.:
“Is having children a right to exercise no matter what the
cost? If having your own child is an entitlement, then the ends justify
whatever means are necessary-even making children into commodities that are
graded like chicken eggs or destroyed on the basis of quality control.”
“276 embryos were created to finally get Dolly. A dozen or
more fetuses were so badly deformed that they were aborted. Other lambs were
destroyed after birth due to their gross deformities.”
“Throughout scripture, God describes children as a
blessing.” ‘Sons are a heritage from the Lord, children a reward from Him’
(Psalm 127:3). “Clearly, these lives-made in His image-are precious (see Psalm
139).”
Related Articles:
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http://www.mercola.com/2001/feb/10/child_clone.htm
Most Test-Tube Embryos Aborted
http://www.mercola.com/2000/apr/23/test_tube_embryos.htm
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