World Without Men?The Immaculate Conception--Stem Cell Parthenogenesis By Mistake. Accidental Virgin Births May be Next

South Korean researcher Hwang Wu-Suk was declared a fraud and laughed off the stage of stem cell research, but the much maligned scientist may have accidentally created the first human embryo-by-parthenogenesis.

Hwang Woo-Suk was found in a 2005 documentary to have conducted cloning experiments using eggs donated by junior staff in his own laboratory, and fabricated the results data. He was charged with fraud and embezzling money from those who funded his research, forcing him to resign in disgrace.

However, according to a US study into his work published last night, the professor inadvertently created cells that were derived by "parthenogenesis", a method by which unfertilised eggs start to divide to form embryos asexually.

Parthenogenesis derives from the Greek for "virgin birth", and is the means of reproduction among all fungi and many plants and animals, including lizards, bees and some fish.

Researchers at the Harvard University Stem Cell Institute and Children's Hospital Boston Stem Cell Program believe the dismissed scientist may have stumbled across the discovery without noticing it.

...Parthenogenesis involves chemically tricking an egg into developing without being fertilised by sperm. Dr Daley's team has done this in mice, and he said researchers recently succeeded in humans. He and his colleagues have now devised a set of standards to analyse the DNA of embryonic stem cells that allows researchers to determine how they were made. They used this method to analyse the South Korean stem cell line. "We now know unequivocally that they are human parthenogenetic stem cells," he said.

Source

A world where men are no longer necessary for the propagation of the species, has long been a dream of feminists--in academia and in science fiction. I have speculated about such worlds in fiction and non-fiction myself.

In a world where almost 60% of undergraduates are female, where approximately half of medical students and law students are female, where 70% of graduate psychology students are female--a world without men is not so difficult to imagine, at least within academia and some professions.

In the high tech world where most technological breakthroughs come from elite mathematics, physics, engineering, and computer science--where females are significantly more rare--a manless world is a more unlikely scenario.

The worlds of energy production and transmission, heavy construction, infrastructure maintenance, big agriculture, transportation, etc. etc. may be at least as dependent on male manpower as the high tech professions.

In reality, a world without men would be a much different world than feminists imagine. It would not simply be a world with little crime, warfare, and domestic strife. Such a world would be a world where large span bridge collapses would become commonplace, and other large scale infrastructure breakdown would likewise occur.





[satire]

Outspoken feminist professors Letitia Snotsberry and Nadine Bullsnort were unavailable for comment as of this writing. Other influential university feminists who asked Al Fin not to reveal their identities have expressed their unalloyed delight at this news of sperm-free embryogenesis.[/satire]