http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8138963.stm

Scientists in Newcastle claim to have created human sperm in the laboratory in what they say is a world first.

The researchers believe the work could eventually help men with fertility problems to father a child.

But other experts say they are not convinced that fully developed sperm have been created.

Writing in the journal Stem Cells and Development, the Newcastle team say it will be at least five years before the technique is perfected.

They began with stem cell lines derived from human embryos donated following IVF treatment.

The stem cells had been removed when the embryo was a few days old and were stored in tanks of liquid nitrogen.

The stem cells were brought to body temperature and put in a chemical mixture to encourage them to grow. They were "tagged" with a genetic marker which enabled the scientists to identify and separate so-called "germline" stem cells from which eggs and sperm are developed.

The male, XY stem cells underwent the crucial process of "meiosis" - halving the number of chromosomes. The process over creating and developing the sperm took four to six weeks.

Understanding sperm

The Newcastle team say the sperm were fully mature, mobile sperm and they have produced a video to back up the research.

FROM BBC WORLD SERVICE More from BBC World Service

Professor Karim Nayernia at Newcastle University and the NorthEast England Stem Cell Institute says: "This is an important development as it will allow researchers to study in detail how sperm forms and lead to a better understanding of infertility in men - why it happens and what is causing it.

"This understanding could help us develop new ways to help couples suffering infertility so they can have a child which is genetically their own.

"It will also allow scientists to study how cells involved in reproduction are affected by toxins, for example, why young boys with leukaemia who undergo chemotherapy can become infertile for life - and possibly lead us to a solution."

However, Professor Nayernia stressed the researchers had no intention of "producing human life in a dish".

Perfectly viable human embryos have been destroyed in order to create sperm over which there will be huge questions of their healthiness and viability Josephine Quintavalle Comment on Reproductive Ethics

But Dr Allan Pacey, a sperm biologist at the University of Sheffield, said he was not convinced the sperm were fully developed.

"The quality of the images is not of sufficiently high resolution and I would need more data. They are early sperm, but functional tests would be needed to know exactly what has been achieved."

The sperm cannot be used for fertility treatment as this is prohibited under UK law. The scientists in Newcastle say it will be at least five years before the technique is perfected - when they believe it should be available to help infertile men.

This research also raises ethical issues. Josephine Quintavalle from Comment on Reproductive Ethics (Corethics) said: "This is an example of immoral madness. Perfectly viable human embryos have been destroyed in order to create sperm over which there will be huge questions of their healthiness and viability.

"It's taking one life in order to perhaps create another. I'm very much in favour of curing infertility but I don't think you can do whatever you like."

But John Harris, Professor of Bioethics at the University of Manchester, said: "I don't see any problems with the use of synthetic, or laboratory produced sperm.

"They will initially be used to make discoveries about the way sperm are formed and how problems arise, and that will be beneficial.

"Eventually it will be used to solve male infertility and that will be wholly beneficial.

"It seems to me this is one of those examples where people are groping around for a problem and there literally isn't one."

Does this mean... that we can finally have a life truly without men?

Here's some... INTERESTING comments.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8142104.stm

Scientists claim to have grown human sperm in a lab, and columnists and bloggers are musing on the possibility of a world where men are no longer needed.

Michael Hanlon in the Daily Mail

is not looking forward to the prospect of a world that doesn't need men.

But if - and it is still a big if - scientists could one day use cells from female embryos to produce sperm, or perhaps even DNA extracted from an adult's skin or cheek-lining cells, then we truly would be living in a terrifying new era.

The Daily Telegraph's Rowan Pelling says men are redundant but worth keeping for menial tasks.

Yet I feel compelled - and not just as the mother of two small boys - to make a spirited defence of the weaker sex. Where would I be without my husband to read 80 pages of a car manual, in French, to find out how the back windscreen-wiper works? Who would tug the dried lumps of excrement from our cat's backside? Who would explain the rules of cricket to an American? Who would clear a blocked drain of unspeakable clotted matter? Who would take hours to demonstrate the dreadnought manoeuvres at the Battle of Jutland, armed only with salt cellars and jam jars? Without men, there would be no one to read Joseph Conrad or Norman Mailer, to remove spiders from the bath, or (important one, this) to tell women they're pretty.

The editor of the Journal of Medical Ethics John Harris says in the Independent that he sees nothing wrong with exercising choice but the real ethical issue isn't about the prospect of a world without men.

Women have many ways of trying to do without men. They don't need men - they just need their sperm. Sperm is a notoriously renewable resource and it is plentiful. There is always the turkey baster option for women who want to get pregnant but do not see the need to get a man... The real ethical issue here is that we do not foreclose the beneficial possibilities of research through prejudice or fear.

The man himself, who made sperm from stem cells

Emily Cook in the Daily Mirror

can only think of one useful man and that's scientist Karim Nayernia, who conducted the sperm research:

Women have always known that men are a bit of a waste of space … Now British scientists have proved how unnecessary blokes truly are by creating the first human sperm from stem cells. And as if that's not a big enough problem for fellas everywhere, the expert behind this revolutionary move is a man.

And Blog Tactic says despite the scientific developments, men should be kept around as play-things.

That means men can become redundant in the human productive cycle and the end of male infertility. But for the ladies, I think we should keep a few of them around just for fun. And for those anti-gay, it is an efficient way to cure male homosexuality: abolish men.

Karen on the Macleans.ca blog hints at how complex the politics of parenting may become by linking to the UK government's current meanings of mother and father. The definitions are more than 5,000 words long. On the same blog Last Man on Earth says:

WE MUST CRUSH THIS! Take away their funding, burn all evidence, delete all records, kidnap and kill those who made the discovery and then bury this entire story under some celebrity scandal. Men can't become irrelevant!

In the Culture Watch blog Bill Muehlenberg is concerned the advances may leave men with nothing to do:

DISCUSS.