Thread by @DennyBurk

“For most of human history, after all, families across the Western world were defined in largely biblical terms: one man, one woman, with children conceived through sex and sanctified by marriage. Everyone else was just a bastard.”

/1
nytimes.com/2020/08/12/opi…

“I.V.G. could allow individuals like our fictional Anna and Nicole to manufacture their own eggs and sperm... enabling more than two people to create a child together. And in the process, our basic notion of families is liable to get upended as well.”

/2
nytimes.com/2020/08/12/opi…

“If the techniques of I.V.G. prove feasible, therefore... A single woman, for example, might mix her egg with sperm fashioned from the genetic material of her two best male friends; the resulting child would have three genetic parents.”

/3

“Or, she might mate her egg with a carefully selected donor sperm, using genetic testing to eliminate any risk of the cystic fibrosis that runs in her own family.”

/4

“Stem cells derived from the resulting embryo could then yield a next generation egg to be paired with her best friends’ similarly well-conceived sperm, yielding a child with four parents. And so on. The implications are enormous.”

/5

“Because once we no longer need the traditional family structure to create children, our need for that traditional family is likely to fade as well.”

/6

“If the revolution of I.V.F. was to liberate reproduction from sex, then the even bigger revolution of I.V.G. is to dismantle completely the reproductive structure of heterosexuality.”

/7

“I.V.G. alone, of course, can’t create that world. And it will take a long time to dismantle norms of marriage and parenting that have been around for millenniums.”

/8

“But the history of assisted reproduction is powerful and clear: Once we create new technologies for conception, we embrace them.”

/9