A future without men?
The bad news for men lovers is that they are now officially an endangered species. Yeah, literally. According to a new book, Adam's Curse: A Future Without Men, men, who for far too long have let their genetic material go, are scheduled to die out within the next 5,000 generations, give or take.
As I said - bad news for men lovers. And, come to think of it, well, men in general.
The book, written by Bryan Sykes, a professor of human genetics at the University of Oxford, states "the Y chromosome is a genetic ruin, littered with molecular wreckage. graveyard of rotting genes. It is a dying chromosome and one day it will become extinct."
Ouch. Apart from those discerning metrosexuals from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, who knew that men were such a bunch of slobs?
But the good news apparently - well, in Sykes' opinion anyway - is that the end of men will present only the slightest logistical inconvenience for women, as science will no doubt come up with innovative ways of arranging egg-on-egg fertilisations. As against good old-fashioned sperm donations, of course, which the blasé professor Sykes has clearly not understood to be the fun part of the whole continuation-of-the species thing.
What scares me - and thankfully I won't be around in 125,000 years' time to find out - is that the good gentleman may just be right. Scientific advancements are being accomplished every day at head-spinning rates. What was previously thought impossible 10, 20 years ago is happening now inside laboratories today as a matter of course. And even more surprising is the public's response, which oftentimes is a chilling collective sang-froid.
Take the recent headline, "Woman gives birth from husband's sperm left frozen for 21 years", which I thought was amazing. The story was about an unnamed British couple that, as a result of the husband's struggle in 1979 with testicular cancer and its subsequent treatment, which it was understood would have left him sterile, decided to have five samples of sperm frozen. Twenty-one years later, after surgery, radiation and chemo all proved successful in ridding him of the cancer, the couple decided they wanted to have children. And they did. After a course of in-vitro fertilisation, in which a single sperm was injected into the egg, the woman gave birth to a bouncing baby boy in 2002. I clipped the article out of the paper with the idea of having stimulating conversation and debate with friends about it.
As it turned out, however, these pathetic losers weren't really impressed. Their response was a disappointing, "Ho hum, well, that's nice." End of story. That's nice? The area of focus for some was not the fact that researchers were celebrating this case as a milestone in modern science. (Indeed, a 21-year gap, the good scientists at St Mary's Hospital in Manchester said, is the longest ever for a successful birth and was evidence that long-term freezing can successfully preserve sperm quality and fertility.) The only question a friend, a jaded cretin, had about the story was an incredulous: "They decided to have a little monster after a whole 21 years of marriage?" Apparently, in light of more newsworthy items such as the shameless shenanigans of Her Imperial Highness J-How-Low-Can-You-Go-Lopez and her soon-to-be-third-ex-husband Marc Anthony, these two British freaks, at this advanced stage of togetherness, should have been in negotiations for their divorce.
But back to Sykes' arguments that men are facing extinction. The professor says of egg-on-egg fertilisations: "The techniques are already here. I reckon that this will be a reality within a relatively short time, where two women decide they want a child of which both of them are parents."
Really, what is Sykes suggesting here? A basically lesbian future?
Meanwhile, a recent study has shown another scientific first: mice reaching adulthood via 'virgin birth' or parthenogenesis, ie, eggs that contained only maternal genetic material, as against other mammals that develop through sexual reproduction and contain genetic material from both parents. In a WebMD Medical News article titled "Are men becoming obsolete?" writer Sid Kirchheimer explores this form of reproduction, which prior to this was not known to successfully take place in mammals for more than a few days because of the absence of the genetic material from sperm that is needed for the development of the placenta. Granted, these mice were genetically engineered. But still. Tweaked genes notwithstanding, this research does seem set to provide, among other things, more information into future advances in embryo fertilisation. It certainly speaks to something in Sykes' theory.
This is indeed disturbing. For even if sperm-freezing for 20 years is an alternative, who's to say we will be able to freeze sperm for more than one generation? I know a few women now who would dance around the grave of the last man to kick the bucket, and Lord knows the idea of kicking back and enjoying a world sans those silly notions of genetic superiority is vaguely appealing. There would hopefully still be, in 5,000 generations or so, a few of us left who savour the innate joys of a good spermathon every now and then.
SOURCE: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/colu...ITHOUT_MEN_.asp
___________________
The only hard feelings should be in your pants
|
