The science of reproduction; the initial good, and the evolving bad.

I remember growing up and seeing my mum’s stomach swollen and brooding my baby brother. I got curious and asked her how he was able to navigate his way to her stomach and when he would finally be coming to life and how. Don’t mind me, I was maybe born to be a reproduction scientist, but I’ve chosen to be something else, and that’s that. Well, I did get an answer, but not as satisfying as I wanted.

Many years later, I learned about the interesting science of reproduction through high school biology. It was fun reading about zygote, foetus, sperm, eggs, and all. Most interesting of all is learning about genotypes, phenotypes, and the crosses therein plus blood group and everything surrounding it. Thank God for the researchers who helped us learn about these things.

Now, we can say that the likely causes of frequent illness of a child could be sickle cell because of the genotype of the parents, and not the usual village people. Also, for genetically incompatible parents, there are procedures in place that’ll help them know the genotype of their babies before they’re born to prevent the birth of sickle cell kids.

May the heavens be with Jacob Nufer who invented caesarean births as it has greatly contributed to reducing the number of maternal deaths over the years.

Pixabay

One more thing I appreciate science in the art of reproduction for is that a lot of people have learnt that the gender of a child is determined by the chromosome contributed by the man, and not otherwise, so the era of challenging women for not birthing an heir is gradually coming to an end. At least, it’s been a while I heard that a man cheated on his wife because he needs a male child in my hometown because gradually, everyone is learning these things. God bless the scientist that discovered the reproduction genetics.

For the help of science, the problem of infertility is a bit resolved, even though it comes at a high cost. Now, people can anonymously donate or sell their sperm (as the case may be) to fertilize some harvested eggs, nurture the eggs in vitro, and then transferred in vivo through surrogacy. What an interesting discovery!

Despite the many benefits of science in reproduction, it feels like there are no more interesting and helpful things to discover in the field. That is why there are lots of experiments that are ethically, socially, and morally wrong.

Pexels

I’ve learnt about gender reversal many years ago, but I never knew there will be a time when the world will explore it as much as it is done now. An individual can now decide to stop being their current gender because they are tired of it. Thanks to the inventor of the surgical procedures, and hormone therapy that have made this possible over the years. However, isn’t that a boundary crossed?

Now, you can deal with two of me, one who was birthed, and the other who might be scientifically born and has the same genetics as me. Don’t get it twisted, it is called human cloning. But, if I get cloned, how do I navigate living life as two individuals instead of the usual one I’m used to? What if my clone commits a crime, will I be safe from getting arrested? I think this is a huge boundary crossed in the science of reproduction.

I love science because the many advanced things we know now are because some people took it upon themselves to want to unravel the things that many of us would rather leave untouched. However, there’s a limit to which these experiments should go.

This is my entry to the June #inleo prompt for today. Find the details in the announcement post

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