Also: Would you have a baby with your best friend?
 | By Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer |
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First of all, you may have heard that Joe Biden announced Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate last night — the first woman of color to be nominated for office by a major party. Frank Bruni is already looking forward to her debating Mike Pence in October, and Chryl Laird writes in an Op-Ed that Black women have been waiting for Ms. Harris for too long. We have more below. |
Now: Would you have a baby with your best friend? |
What about your two best friends? |
What about the three best friends you lived with right after college: a little household of five, raising a baby who is genetically related to everyone? What if we severed the link between the (often unromantic) world of babies and the world of love, sex and marriage completely? What would the consequences be? |
In a piece excerpted from her forthcoming book, Debora Spar, a dean at Harvard Business School, argues that this is the future we’re heading for — and that, truthfully, it may not matter all that much whether the above scenario makes you happy or makes you cringe. We (almost) have the technology; once we do, the social repercussions will follow. |
The technology Debora is referring to is something called in vitro gametogenesis, a technique that can theoretically allow anyone to manufacture an egg or sperm cell from their own stem cells. (So far, it’s only worked in mice, but she argues that the history of reproductive technology shows that what works in animals eventually makes the leap to humans.) |
When it does, Debora writes, the first to take advantage will probably be same-sex couples “who, for the first time in history, could conceive children who are wholly and genetically ‘theirs.’” But I.V.G., as it’s called, opens up many more possibilities: |
| A single woman, for example, might mix her egg with sperm fashioned from the genetic material of her two best male friends; the resulting child would have three genetic parents. Or, she might mate her egg with a carefully selected donor sperm, using genetic testing to eliminate any risk of the cystic fibrosis that runs in her own family. Stem cells derived from the resulting embryo could then yield a next generation egg to be paired with her best friends’ similarly well-conceived sperm, yielding a child with four parents. And so on. |
Does this freak you out? A (very unscientific) survey of my colleagues suggests you’re not alone. The idea of a baby with four genetic parents “changes everything we’ve ever known about sex and babies and marriage,” Debora writes — and depending on your perspective, that is either utopian or alarming. |
Debora also argues that reproductive technologies played an underappreciated role in the history of legalized same-sex marriage, and the broader social acceptance of same-sex couples. Technologies like surrogacy shaped the legal norms around parenthood in ways that laid the groundwork for same-sex marriage. Technologies like I.V.G. could, eventually, do the same for those engaged in what Debora calls “poly parenting.” |
I found it a fascinating and provocative argument; I hope you do too. |
Joe Biden selected Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate, embracing a former rival who later became a vocal supporter. Join Patricia Mazzei, Miami bureau chief, and reporters Alexander Burns, Astead Herndon and Nick Corasaniti today at 6 p.m. Eastern to discuss what this pick means for Biden’s campaign and the election. Hosted by Rachel Dry, New York Times deputy politics editor. R.S.V.P. |
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