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posted ago by Insignificant ago by Insignificant +20 / -2

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/03/17/977573846/scientists-create-living-entities-that-closely-resemble-human-embryos

"The goal of the experiments is to gain important insights into early human development and find new ways to prevent birth defects and miscarriages and treat fertility problems."

"I'm sure it makes anyone who is morally serious nervous when people start creating structures in a petri dish that are this close to being early human beings," says Dr. Daniel Sulmasy, a bioethicist at Georgetown University."

"They're not quite there yet, and so that's good. But the more they press the envelope, the more nervous I think anybody would get that people are trying to sort of create human beings in a test tube," Sulmasy says."

"The new laboratory-made embryo-like entities have been dubbed "blastoids."

"We are very excited...Now with this technique, we can make hundreds of these structures. So this will allow us to scale up our understanding of very early human development. We think this will be very important."

"In fact, a team of scientists at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science figured out how to grow mouse embryos outside the womb — a step toward creating an "artificial womb," according to a report published Wednesday in the journal Nature."

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/03/17/977573846/scientists-create-living-entities-that-closely-resemble-human-embryos