How to Make a Human: Are We Rewriting the Story?
by Lara Ziegler, Staff Writer
Human reproduction used to be a short and simple tale. One we have all been told in school: A woman’s egg cell unites with a man’s sperm cell. The chromosomes of the mother and father mix, resulting in a child inheriting half of each parents’ DNA. The fertilised cell grows into an embryo and finally into a new human being. The dream of having offspring that is genetically related to both parents, used to be a strictly heterosexual one.
Scientists have long been rewriting this story. Next to adoption or co-parenting, queer couples nowadays have multiple options to conceive a child. These include donor insemination, surrogacy, or something called in vitro fertilisation (IVF) – a method where egg cells are fertilised with sperm in the laboratory and ...