Reproductive technology encompasses all current and anticipated uses of technology in human and animal reproduction, including assisted reproductive technology, contraception and others. It is also termed Assisted Reproductive Technology, where it entails an array of appliances and procedures that enable the realization of safe, improved and healthier reproduction. While this is not true of all men and women, for an array of married couples, the ability to have children is vital. But through the technology, infertile couples have been provided with options that would allow them to conceive children.
Overview
Assisted reproductive technology
Assisted reproductive technology. Examples of ART include in vitro fertilization and its possible expansions, including:
Reproductive technology can inform family planning by providing individual prognoses regarding the likelihood of pregnancy. It facilitates the monitoring of ovarian reserve, follicular dynamics and associated biomarkers in females, and semen analysis in males.
Contraception
is a form of reproductive technology that enables people to control their fertility. This is inhady with reproduction, which is the ability of a species to perpetuate and in the human species it is looked upon as a right in today's society. Males and females alike feel pressure that in order to be fully male or fully female they must procreate.
Others
The following reproductive techniques are not currently in routine clinical use; most are still undergoing development:
Research is currently investigating the possibility of same-sex procreation, which would produce offspring with equal genetic contributions from either two females or two males. This form of reproduction has become a possibility through the creation of either female sperm or male eggs. Same-sex procreation would remove the need for lesbian and gay couples to rely on a third party donation of a sperm or an egg for reproduction. The first significant development occurred in 1991, in a patent application filed by U.Penn. scientists to fix male sperm by extracting some sperm, correcting a genetic defect in vitro, and injecting the sperm back into the male's testicles. While the vast majority of the patent application dealt with male sperm, one line suggested that the procedure would work with XX cells, i.e., cells from an adult woman to make female sperm. In the two decades that followed, the idea of female sperm became more of a reality. In 1997, scientists partially confirmed such techniques by creating chicken female sperm in a similar manner. They did so by injecting blood stem cells from an adult female chicken into a male chicken's testicles. In 2004, other Japanese scientists created two female offspring by combining the eggs of two adult mice. In 2008, research was done specifically for methods on creating human female sperm using artificial or natural Y chromosomes and testicular transplantation. A UK-based group predicted they would be able to create human female sperm within five years. So far no conclusive successes have been achieved. In 2018 Chinese research scientists produced 29 viable mice offspring from two mother mice by creating sperm-like structures from haploid Embryonic stem cells using gene editing to alter imprinted regions of DNA. They were unable to get viable offspring from two fathers. Experts noted that there was little chance of these techniques being applied to humans in the near future.
Ethics
These Reproductive technologies have come a long way in the last twenty years, and it will continue in making the expansive strides and advancements. However, the main question asked from the view of the ethical lens "Where do babies come from?" This is becoming even harder and harder to answer. Often than not, the response that is used sounds something like, if a man and a woman love each other and desire to conceive, and maybe they cannot. Their desire does not have to stop there. Hence, there is now the use of Vitro fertilization, fertility drugs, and sperm/egg donors as well as future advances kick in and answer this takes on the new twist as the couple is capacitated in looking through the catalog to pick what kind of baby they desire. This new technological advance has a lot of ethical dilemmas that surround it as it will lead to more exorbitant charges, which will cause a reduction in the amount as well as the types of individuals who may afford the new procedures. There is a concern about if the future generations of natural births will lorded over by a genetically enhanced master class Many issues of reproductive technology have given rise to bioethical issues, since technology often alters the assumptions that lie behind existing systems of sexual and reproductive morality. Other ethical considerations arise with the application of ART to women of advanced maternal age, who have higher changes of medical complications, and possibly in the future its application to post-menopausal women. Also, ethical issues of human enhancement arise when reproductive technology has evolved to be a potential technology for not only reproductively inhibited people but even for otherwise re-productively healthy people. On the negative aspect of, if this matter is shipped all over the country between dissimilar sperm banks how can we keep up who is from what genetic descent? Where this may quite possibly lead to inner familial marriages, causing numerous genetic flaws in future generations. These advances may actually hinder the human race. With the conclusion of the Human Genome Project, which is rapidly imminent, the scenario is becoming even more far fetched. See individual subarticles for details.
In fiction
Films and other fiction depicting contemporary emotional struggles of assisted reproductive technology have had an upswing first in the latter part of the 2000s decade, although the techniques have been available for decades.
Science fiction has tackled the themes of creating life through other than the conventional methods since Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In the 20th century, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World was the first major fictional work to anticipate the possible social consequences of reproductive technology. Its largely negative view was reversed when the author revisited the same themes in his utopian final novel, Island.
