Infertility

He is a valuable member of the College of Health Sciences.”Ko received his doctorate at Seoul National University in South Korea in 1998 before moving to Kentucky and beginning his postdoctoral work at UK.

For more information on Ko’s research, visit his laboratory Web site.

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The discovery that cells which behave like ESCs can now be obtained from adult mice may now open up the possibility of a similar “ethical” source from grown men.

“We’re in the process of doing this in humans, and we’re optimistic,” says Gerd Hasenfuss of the Georg-August University of Göttingen, Germany, and head of the team which pioneered the breakthrough.

Tissue choice Hasenfuss and his colleagues first extracted spermatagonial stem cells from adult mouse testes, before growing them in the lab in a special mixture of growth factors and nutrients which coaxed the cells into becoming ESC-like cells instead of sperm.

“We can turn these into all kinds of tissue, from beating cardiac and vascular cells to neurons, skin cells and liver cells,” says Hasenfuss.

And the process worked in 27% of the mice they experimented on.

Although the cells behaved like ESCs in tests, the team have decided to call them “multipotent adult germline stem cells” to distinguish them from their embryonically-derived counterparts.

“I think it will solve the ethical problem if you can generate cells from adult humans,” says Hasenfuss.

He told New Scientist that his team is already taking testicle-tissue samples under consent from patients undergoing operations for oth...

"You can see the purposes for somebody who is undergoing treatment for cancer, but doing it simply because the woman is getting older doesn't seem to me to be a good use of resources, because as she gets older she has such a small chance of getting pregnant, and there are questions about looking after the interests of the child who has a mother who is so much older." Melbourne University medical ethicist Leslie Cannold says that if women received adequate social support, such as maternity leave and child care, they would not need to turn to such methods.

She is "appalled and exasperated" by the extra things a woman now needs to do to have a baby.

Then there are the legal ramifications.

Fertility is heavily regulated in Victoria and despite what technology will eventually be able to achieve, the law will still act as a barrier for single women.

In this state, a single woman cannot undergo fertility treatment unless she proves she is clinically infertile (the Victorian Law Reform Commission has recommended that this should change).

So while there is nothing stopping her from freezing her eggs, if she gives up on ever finding a man, the law as it stands now won't permit her to use them.

The But authority chairman Professor Jock Findlay says it's up to the community and "our political people" to decide what's rig...