This whole sperm thing

If you pay any attention to the news - at all - in the last couple of days you've probably heard the news that some scientists have managed to create sperm using stem cells. Significantly, they can do this from a woman's stem cells.

As you can predict there's been things like this - a list of 101 uses for a man and the like. It's dotted around the media...all over the place.

And I'm getting rather sick of it.

Because it's even more short sighted then cutting off your feet - because you've got a remote control.

There's a couple of reasons this isn't going to go anywhere.

1) Check the person who made this possible - a man. In all of human history a large proportion of new technology has been created and designed by men.

Women have made huge contributions - but if you want complete obsession over 20 years of dedication, without distractions of children, real life or even noticing an oncoming train...

Or - to put it another way - women tend to lead rounder lives, with things like a work-life balance. Men do not.

2) Economics - right now the cost for the majority of couples who want children the cost to create them is negative. That is - they pay less to conceive them, because they are not using (some form of) contraception.

Imagine if the cost was somewhat similar to a medical procedure - but I'm not going to pick one. Look around on the internet - they are Expensive. But as a opening number, lets say £2000. Average UK wage is about 25% (according to the ONS, anyway) - so 1/3 in tax (wishful thinking, I know..) leaves us with about 16K. So that's 6 weeks income straight.

And what do you do in our perfect female society when a boy is conceived? Abort them all? Separate out all the male sperm? (Good luck with that)

So we're talking a large cost that could be avoided, with additional moral dilemma and heartache for added fun.

3) And the real reason this won't happen any time soon - not economics, not science..

Most women rather like men. Most men rather like women. No matter how much they might complain about each other...however many painful heartbreaks they have they still want the other.

So this scientific miracle will be left as a oddity that might help a few childless couples, perhaps a few children might be born to pairs of women.

But society as a whole will not spend a huge amount of money on a solution that would exclude the low paid, leaving half the population rather upset and the other half unsatisfied.

If any country did try it people would just leave for another that didn't. And before you say "what if we all did it" - imagine trying to sustain this technology in somewhere like Africa. It's hard enough to live there as it is.

So could the mainstream media please stop going on about a fantasy world that will never exist and get back to reporting the real news.

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