So Now Gay Marriages Could Be For Procreation Too

[MsGuy]

British and Israeli boffins have just come up with a method to create both sperm and eggs from skin stem cells which means gay couples may soon be able to have their very own biological kids w/o resorting to an outside donor.

The article natters on about how this would make having children possible for gay couples. It's not much different in principal from the test tube babes already available to infertile straight couples.

Now the boffins in question confine their speculations to making babies for couples but that's just because they're stuffy old scientists concerned about their reputations, IMHO. Well and maybe their grant money.

I'm sure clever boys with a sufficiently kinky turn of mind (like those who frequent these threads) immediately realized that there's no particular reason the eggs and sperm couldn't both be derived from the stem cells of a single donor. Yep, you could make your own baby.

Mind you the kid would not really be a clone but it would be more closely related than, say, a child you might have with your full sister or even your mother (are you paying attention, AdamSmith?).

So...two questions:

1) Can anyone here define the degree of relatedness of a stem child with its father? I can't seem to quite get a handle on this (except it wouldn't be a clone).

2) Would anyone here consider having a stem child (for lack of a better word)? Or is that a little too weird even for our kinkier posters?

[AdamSmith]

AS never sleeps.

Struggling though to recall from eons-ago AP biology whether this would verge toward risking the kind of genetic-disorder problems that the incest taboo seeks to prevent? (Leaving aside for now the separate discussion of what incest taboos may really be about.)

[RA1]

Don't we have enough single parents? What is the point of having a SO if you can't share some stem cells?

Best regards,

RA1

[MsGuy]

whether this would verge toward risking the kind of genetic-disorder problems that the incest taboo seeks to prevent?

Well, let's say we would be looking for nasty recessives since bad dominant genes would already be expressed in you (&/or your sister). If you are doubled on the nasty recessive loci, they also would have expressed, so no surprises there either.

OK, let's also say neither you nor your sister has a long prehensile tail (or what ever it is we're worried about) but your mother carries the LPT recessive gene. There would be one chance in four of your child needing a quick tail bob soon after birth.

Now suppose we allow your poor sister get back to your cousins and go the stem child route. Further suppose you have the LPT recessive. There would be a 50% chance of one of your stem sperm carrying the LPT gene and likewise a 50% chance of your stem egg carrying the LPT gene or a 25% chance of you being able to hang the kid around your neck while you kept both hands free to prepare its formula.

So it's a wash on incest related genetic disorders, stem child vs. sister child.

I'm not so sure how things work out if we're talking about traits (like height, intelligence etc.) that are multi-gene controlled or relate back to clusters of genes interacting with each other. It's like thinking about the Mid-East, my mind starts twisting around on itself when I try to reason it out and I lack crucial blobs of information. And then there's all those unknown unknowns.

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All of which does not address my original question:

If a long lost great uncle hit the lottery and on his death bed offered you all his millions conditioned only on you having a biological child, would you consider a stem child or would you stick with the traditional time tested sister child route?

[lookin]

Happy Father's Day from Me, Myself and I

[MsGuy]

I think you're right on track about the psychological aspects of this stuff, lookin, but biologically a stem child is not the same thing as a clone.