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In recent years, Singapore has increasingly leveraged new reproductive technologies to overcome the country's rapidly aging demographics and dismal fertility rate, which hit a new low in 2022.
Hence, it would be timely for Singapore’s Bioethics Advisory Committee (BAC) to critically examine relevant ethical, legal and social issues associated with newly emerging reproductive technology platforms, which are thus summarized as follows;
In Vitro Gametogenesis (IVG) refers to the generation of artificial lab-grown sperm and eggs from other cell types within the body such as skin cells. Utilizing advanced molecular biology techniques, skin cells can be reprogrammed into an embryonic stem cell-like state, which can then be induced into functional sperm or eggs by various chemicals and growth factors within a laboratory dish.
Several research groups in Japan and China have already demonstrated the birth of live healthy offspring from IVG-generated sperm and eggs derived from the skin cells of mice and rats, which could in turn reproduce normally and give rise to the next generation of healthy offspring. It is highly plausible that these will soon be replicated in humans...