Opinion: STAT+: Japan's green light for making human embryos from stem cells takes us into uncharted territory

Japanese regulators just quietly gave researchers there a historic OK to generate human embryos from stem cells in the lab — no ovaries or testes needed.

Scientists in Japan and around the world are quickly working toward making viable human eggs and sperm from stem cells, a process called in vitro gametogenesis, or IVG. Those stem cell-derived sperm and eggs could be used for vitro fertilization (IVF) to generate human embryos for research or, one day, making babies. Let’s call the potential new process stem cell IVF.

Why go down this path?

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