The news today that scientists at the University of Newcastle and NorthEast England Stem Cell Institute have created human sperm in the laboratory will, if anything, lead to much religious and gender-role hand wringing in the press. It had me immediately thinking of a dystopian future where men, redundant of their only true biological purpose, are treated as second-class citizens and subjugated as sex slaves by a repressive matriarchy. Of course, that is one of my long-held fantasies, so fingers crossed.
It did lead to a rather fruity exchange on Radio 4's Today Programme which brought out my adolescent giggling inner-Beavis ("heh, heh, heh... he said sperm"). To be fair, presenter Evan Davis was not exactly taking it all that seriously, either. Asking another scientist whether the Newcastle team had actually created viable sperm, the scientist was unsure. "I've been looking at sperm under the microscope for every day of the last 20 years..." he began. "Well, somebody has to," interrupted Davis.
Seriously, the punditocracy's poring over the issue will be completely justified as it does raise a number of weighty issues. One, which rarely gets addressed, however, is why we need all this reproductive science in the first place. Last time I checked, the world's population was teetering on the unsustainable. Surely, there are enough babies to go around for barren middle class Westerners. Madonna and Angelina's much-derided third world baby shopping sprees are not so sinister after all; maybe it is much more responsible to get a child from Africa that to concoct it in an IVF clinic.
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