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BREAKING BOUNDARIES: When IVG's dystopian sci-fi enters reality
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” — Ian Malcolm, "Jurassic Park"
A biotech company claims to have produced “the first early human eggs from stem cells” produced with the use of female fetal tissue and human blood. This technology is known as in-vitro gametogenesis (IVG) — a dystopian and Frankensteinian technology that has wide-ranging implications, and the potential to “redefine” human reproduction.
In-vitro gametogenesis, or IVG, is an emerging technology that utilizes the concepts of IVF but goes much further, into the realm of dystopian science fiction by creating the possibility of engineering children with only one genetic parent or two genetic same-sex parents.
IVG uses adult cells from skin or blood, "reprograms" them to behave like cells found in human embryos, then manipulates them in order to create sperm/egg cells, which could be inserted by IVF into a woman's womb (or a possible future artificial womb).
Some scientists theorize that by 2033, IVG will have been successfully used to conceive a human child. And some are hoping that IVG could be used by LGBTQ individuals who “covet” heterosexual couples’ natural ability to produce life, and who want to “create children with whom both parents are genetically related.”
IVG researchers use aborted children to harvest and then engineer the stem cells involved in IVG.
Dr. David Prentice told Live Action News that IVG lab attempts so far have produced “incomplete and defective gametes," but that the danger of IVG is real, even if distant, and must be prohibited.
Bioethics experts warn that IVG could lead to the mass destruction of human life, facilitating “untold experiments on human beings in a lab,” and describe unprecedented scenarios where adult desires far outweigh the fundamental rights of children.
After manufacturing human gametes and embryos with mere skin or blood cells, future scenarios include the possibility of lab-produced children who are intentionally denied a biological mother or father, creating a precarious moral landscape where human beings are treated as industrial products rather than as unique human beings with inherent dignity.
According to Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D., a Professor at UC Davis School of Medicine in Cell Biology and Human Anatomy, in vitro gametogenesis (IVG) is a “laboratory method to create gametes, meaning sperm or eggs, from stem cells” outside of the human body such as in a “test tube.”
It is a multistep process that utilizes adult cells obtained from skin or blood, which are “reprogrammed” to “behave” like cells naturally found in human embryos (known as pluripotent stem cells). The reprogrammed cells are then known as induced pluripotent stem cells (or iPS cells), which are further manipulated to mimic primordial germ cells (PGCs) — “the embryonic precursors of eggs or sperm.”
Using existing IVF technologies, the IVG created sperm/egg would be used to produce an embryo that could then (in theory) be inserted into a woman’s womb or — if the technology were to become more advanced in the future — implanted into an artificial womb.
Last year, Live Action News reported that Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) claimed to have created human embryos from skin cells. Prior to that, in March 2023, two mice were born after an IVG-involved conception in which DNA from two male mice were used. Research was led by scientist and renowned stem cell researcher Katsuhiko Hayashi, and was conducted at Kyushu University in Japan.
More recently, Conception, a California biotech firm, announced it had converted human blood cells into stem cells that were “coaxed” into “becoming miniature human ovaries that contain the early eggs” — which the company hopes will further advance IVG.
“The technology is one of the most complex therapies ever to be developed. We are not making just a single cell type; we are building entire mini-overies in the lab derived from stem cells, as the whole organ is important for proper egg development,” Conception reported.
During a multiday conference in 2023 on IVG hosted by the National Academies, Paula Amato, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the School of Medicine OHSU, estimated that by early 2033, IVG will have been successfully used to conceive a human child.
However, Dr. David Prentice, president of Science Alliance for Life and Technology (SALT), argues that the science remains “rudimentary.”
Dr Prentice told Live Action News that “getting stem cells to form truly normal and functional gametes is a very complex procedure in the normal human body,” and lab attempts so far have produced “incomplete and defective gametes.”
However, Dr. Prentice does not dismiss the progression of IVG technologies, telling Live Action News:
“Beyond the science, the desire to produce lab-generated gametes is of great concern. Some frame this as an attempt to redefine reproduction... Others could use this as an opportunity to produce untold numbers of experimental human beings in the lab, or for bizarre methods of human embryo production such as cloning and 3-parent embryos, or genetic experiments to produce designer babies.
In every case, pursuing these desires will lead to massive destruction of human lives and should be prohibited.”
Bioethics fellow Emily Packard Dawson warned that IVG advancements are “outpacing” existing ethical frameworks. Dawson wrote that the technology could theoretically “permit solo genetic parenting,” meaning an embryo would have only one genetic parent whose DNA was used to manufacture both sperm and egg.
At the 2023 IVG conference, Stanford professor Henry T. Greely, author of “The end of sex and the future of human reproduction,” spoke of possible future scenarios, such as 90-year-old mothers... or nine-year-old mothers, or even the use of a deceased person’s DNA from a cell that isn't a sperm or egg to then create sperm and egg, which would theoretically then fertilize and produce a child.
During the conference, Katherine Kraschel, executive director of Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy, further explained how IVG technologies could be used by LGBTQ individuals who “covet” heterosexual couples’ natural ability to produce life, and who desire to “create children with whom both parents are genetically related” (emphasis added):
IVG/IVF could facilitate this sort of formal equality to be just like our cis gender heterosexual people... we too could point to our children and say he has your eyes and my nose in a way that I think many queer people covet...
“IVG’s virtue may depend upon one’s vision for an ideal world for LGTBQ families,” Kraschel added.
In these types of scenarios, it is clear that the concern would not be for the child but for the desires of adults.
Conception, originally named Ovid Research, was co-founded in 2017 by Matt Krisiloff and is reported to be the “largest commercial venture” in IVG advancements. Krisiloff is also the founder of SciFounder, which provides opportunities for “funding and mentorship for early-stage startups that work on challenging technologies.” Biologist Pablo Hurtado and embryologist/former IVF clinic employee Bianka Seres are also co-founders.
In 2021, MIT Technology Review reported that the California based biotech company received $20 million from tech industry leaders including Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI, behind ChatGPT), Jaan Tallinn (co-founder of Skype), and Blake Borgeson (co-founder of Recursion Pharmaceuticals), all of whom espouse transhumanist goals. Notably, much of IVG’s advancements are privately funded by big-tech giants.
MIT Technology Review writer Antonio Reglado reported meeting with Katsuhiko Hayashi and his mentor after their mice pup success at Japan’s Kyushu University. Hayashi told Reglado that copying the IVG technology used in the mice experiment to human application would require tissues from aborted babies.
He said, “Scientists would have to obtain follicle cells from weeks-old human embryos or fetuses.”
And that’s exactly what Krisiloff reportedly aimed to do.
In 2021, Reglado reported:
At Conception, scientists began by trying the fetal-tissue approach, which they believed was the fastest way to get a proof-of-concept egg. Krisiloff made extensive efforts to obtain the material—at one point even tweeting at abortion providers directly. He also sought collaborations with UCLA and Stanford, although these efforts didn’t pan out.
By April 2023, during the National Academies workshop, Krisiloff presented on Conception’s reported advancements using fetal ovaries during testing. He displayed a photo of a fetal ovary at 19 weeks gestation, stating, “We think we (and others) are closer to a proof of concept protocol than it may seem.”
A few months later, NPR reported that Conception’s scientist “created the primordial cells by exposing induced pluripotent stem cells to a special protein elixir. This ingredient coaxed them into developing into cells that could become either sperm or eggs.” NPR further reported:
Hurtado had motioned for Miller [a scientist at the lab] to say nothing more because the company doesn't want to disclose exactly how it managed to create the human ovarian follicles inside its mini-ovaries. “There are lots of parts of our research we cannot share right now,” Hurtado says. “We are still working on them.”
Fast forward to June 2026, when Conception reported that “ovarian helper cells” are used to help “coax” the “converted blood cells into stem cells” that result in the stem cells to become “miniature human ovaries that contain the early eggs,” further claiming that “[a]n early sign of success for our mini-ovaries is that we see their organization closely mimics the structure of a developing human ovary.”
There is no clear way to currently know how the fetal tissues were obtained by Conception. Since Conception is funded by private means, restrictions regarding federal dollars being used for research involving aborted babies are not much of a concern for the company.
Regulations, or lack thereof, on research involving abortion victims are generally regulated by state legislators under the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (UAGA). California allows for research on aborted babies' tissue. MIT reported that at the time, Krisiloff “declined to say where Conception gets its tissue donations currently.”
However, during the same April 2023 IVG conference, several other scientists explicitly mentioned using aborted babies and human embryos donated from IVF in their studies and research, including:
Ali Brivanlou with Rockefeller University and co-founder of Rumi Scientific, who spoke on previous studies that focused on advancements in research involving primordial germ cells (PGCs) that are needed in the IVG progress using donated embryos from an IVF clinic.
Azim Surani with University of Cambridge and the Gurdon Institute, who specifically stated, “we can do some studies, we can get these aborted fetuses…from about week 5, they’re quite rare at week 5 but we can get some, and we can take these embryos and we can take out these genital ridges, the developing gonads, and we can sort primordial germ cells from them.”
Cornell University professor Paula Cohen, who spoke of using aborted babies and grafting the fetal ovaries onto mice, noting how studying meiosis is important for IVG use, stated, “We have actually taken human fetal ovaries and xenographed them into the mouse initially to look at meiosis, but we were really surprised to see that within 10 weeks these ovaries go through to complete follicular genesis.”
Mitinori Saitou with Kyoto University, who helped with the successful mice pup experiment and admitted to using aborted human babies along with monkey embryos while working on studying human in-vitro oogenesis (IVO) technology advancement (also helpful for the progress of IVG). He stated during his presentation, “We took out aborted fetal embryos around 10 or 11 week post-fertilization or 8-week monkey post-fetal embryos” to study ovarian cells.
Should humanity pursue a technology simply because it has the capacity to do so? As the scientific community rushes to redefine human reproduction, society must ask itself a fundamental question: what does it mean to be human?
Live Action News is pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective.
Our work is possible because of our donors. Please consider giving to further our work of changing hearts and minds on issues of life and human dignity.
Contact editor@liveaction.org for questions, corrections, or if you are seeking permission to reprint any Live Action News content.
Guest Articles: To submit a guest article to Live Action News, email editor@liveaction.org with an attached Word document of 800-1000 words. Please also attach any photos relevant to your submission if applicable. If your submission is accepted for publication, you will be notified within three weeks. Guest articles are not compensated (see our Open License Agreement). Thank you for your interest in Live Action News!
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·BREAKING BOUNDARIES: When IVG's dystopian sci-fi enters reality
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” — Ian Malcolm, "Jurassic Park"
A biotech company claims to have produced “the first early human eggs from stem cells” produced with the use of female fetal tissue and human blood. This technology is known as in-vitro gametogenesis (IVG) — a dystopian and Frankensteinian technology that has wide-ranging implications, and the potential to “redefine” human reproduction.
In-vitro gametogenesis, or IVG, is an emerging technology that utilizes the concepts of IVF but goes much further, into the realm of dystopian science fiction by creating the possibility of engineering children with only one genetic parent or two genetic same-sex parents.
IVG uses adult cells from skin or blood, "reprograms" them to behave like cells found in human embryos, then manipulates them in order to create sperm/egg cells, which could be inserted by IVF into a woman's womb (or a possible future artificial womb).
Some scientists theorize that by 2033, IVG will have been successfully used to conceive a human child. And some are hoping that IVG could be used by LGBTQ individuals who “covet” heterosexual couples’ natural ability to produce life, and who want to “create children with whom both parents are genetically related.”
IVG researchers use aborted children to harvest and then engineer the stem cells involved in IVG.
Dr. David Prentice told Live Action News that IVG lab attempts so far have produced “incomplete and defective gametes," but that the danger of IVG is real, even if distant, and must be prohibited.
Bioethics experts warn that IVG could lead to the mass destruction of human life, facilitating “untold experiments on human beings in a lab,” and describe unprecedented scenarios where adult desires far outweigh the fundamental rights of children.
After manufacturing human gametes and embryos with mere skin or blood cells, future scenarios include the possibility of lab-produced children who are intentionally denied a biological mother or father, creating a precarious moral landscape where human beings are treated as industrial products rather than as unique human beings with inherent dignity.
According to Paul Knoepfler, Ph.D., a Professor at UC Davis School of Medicine in Cell Biology and Human Anatomy, in vitro gametogenesis (IVG) is a “laboratory method to create gametes, meaning sperm or eggs, from stem cells” outside of the human body such as in a “test tube.”
It is a multistep process that utilizes adult cells obtained from skin or blood, which are “reprogrammed” to “behave” like cells naturally found in human embryos (known as pluripotent stem cells). The reprogrammed cells are then known as induced pluripotent stem cells (or iPS cells), which are further manipulated to mimic primordial germ cells (PGCs) — “the embryonic precursors of eggs or sperm.”
Using existing IVF technologies, the IVG created sperm/egg would be used to produce an embryo that could then (in theory) be inserted into a woman’s womb or — if the technology were to become more advanced in the future — implanted into an artificial womb.
Last year, Live Action News reported that Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) claimed to have created human embryos from skin cells. Prior to that, in March 2023, two mice were born after an IVG-involved conception in which DNA from two male mice were used. Research was led by scientist and renowned stem cell researcher Katsuhiko Hayashi, and was conducted at Kyushu University in Japan.
More recently, Conception, a California biotech firm, announced it had converted human blood cells into stem cells that were “coaxed” into “becoming miniature human ovaries that contain the early eggs” — which the company hopes will further advance IVG.
“The technology is one of the most complex therapies ever to be developed. We are not making just a single cell type; we are building entire mini-overies in the lab derived from stem cells, as the whole organ is important for proper egg development,” Conception reported.
During a multiday conference in 2023 on IVG hosted by the National Academies, Paula Amato, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the School of Medicine OHSU, estimated that by early 2033, IVG will have been successfully used to conceive a human child.
However, Dr. David Prentice, president of Science Alliance for Life and Technology (SALT), argues that the science remains “rudimentary.”
Dr Prentice told Live Action News that “getting stem cells to form truly normal and functional gametes is a very complex procedure in the normal human body,” and lab attempts so far have produced “incomplete and defective gametes.”
However, Dr. Prentice does not dismiss the progression of IVG technologies, telling Live Action News:
“Beyond the science, the desire to produce lab-generated gametes is of great concern. Some frame this as an attempt to redefine reproduction... Others could use this as an opportunity to produce untold numbers of experimental human beings in the lab, or for bizarre methods of human embryo production such as cloning and 3-parent embryos, or genetic experiments to produce designer babies.
In every case, pursuing these desires will lead to massive destruction of human lives and should be prohibited.”
Bioethics fellow Emily Packard Dawson warned that IVG advancements are “outpacing” existing ethical frameworks. Dawson wrote that the technology could theoretically “permit solo genetic parenting,” meaning an embryo would have only one genetic parent whose DNA was used to manufacture both sperm and egg.
At the 2023 IVG conference, Stanford professor Henry T. Greely, author of “The end of sex and the future of human reproduction,” spoke of possible future scenarios, such as 90-year-old mothers... or nine-year-old mothers, or even the use of a deceased person’s DNA from a cell that isn't a sperm or egg to then create sperm and egg, which would theoretically then fertilize and produce a child.
During the conference, Katherine Kraschel, executive director of Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy, further explained how IVG technologies could be used by LGBTQ individuals who “covet” heterosexual couples’ natural ability to produce life, and who desire to “create children with whom both parents are genetically related” (emphasis added):
IVG/IVF could facilitate this sort of formal equality to be just like our cis gender heterosexual people... we too could point to our children and say he has your eyes and my nose in a way that I think many queer people covet...
“IVG’s virtue may depend upon one’s vision for an ideal world for LGTBQ families,” Kraschel added.
In these types of scenarios, it is clear that the concern would not be for the child but for the desires of adults.
Conception, originally named Ovid Research, was co-founded in 2017 by Matt Krisiloff and is reported to be the “largest commercial venture” in IVG advancements. Krisiloff is also the founder of SciFounder, which provides opportunities for “funding and mentorship for early-stage startups that work on challenging technologies.” Biologist Pablo Hurtado and embryologist/former IVF clinic employee Bianka Seres are also co-founders.
In 2021, MIT Technology Review reported that the California based biotech company received $20 million from tech industry leaders including Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI, behind ChatGPT), Jaan Tallinn (co-founder of Skype), and Blake Borgeson (co-founder of Recursion Pharmaceuticals), all of whom espouse transhumanist goals. Notably, much of IVG’s advancements are privately funded by big-tech giants.
MIT Technology Review writer Antonio Reglado reported meeting with Katsuhiko Hayashi and his mentor after their mice pup success at Japan’s Kyushu University. Hayashi told Reglado that copying the IVG technology used in the mice experiment to human application would require tissues from aborted babies.
He said, “Scientists would have to obtain follicle cells from weeks-old human embryos or fetuses.”
And that’s exactly what Krisiloff reportedly aimed to do.
In 2021, Reglado reported:
At Conception, scientists began by trying the fetal-tissue approach, which they believed was the fastest way to get a proof-of-concept egg. Krisiloff made extensive efforts to obtain the material—at one point even tweeting at abortion providers directly. He also sought collaborations with UCLA and Stanford, although these efforts didn’t pan out.
By April 2023, during the National Academies workshop, Krisiloff presented on Conception’s reported advancements using fetal ovaries during testing. He displayed a photo of a fetal ovary at 19 weeks gestation, stating, “We think we (and others) are closer to a proof of concept protocol than it may seem.”
A few months later, NPR reported that Conception’s scientist “created the primordial cells by exposing induced pluripotent stem cells to a special protein elixir. This ingredient coaxed them into developing into cells that could become either sperm or eggs.” NPR further reported:
Hurtado had motioned for Miller [a scientist at the lab] to say nothing more because the company doesn't want to disclose exactly how it managed to create the human ovarian follicles inside its mini-ovaries. “There are lots of parts of our research we cannot share right now,” Hurtado says. “We are still working on them.”
Fast forward to June 2026, when Conception reported that “ovarian helper cells” are used to help “coax” the “converted blood cells into stem cells” that result in the stem cells to become “miniature human ovaries that contain the early eggs,” further claiming that “[a]n early sign of success for our mini-ovaries is that we see their organization closely mimics the structure of a developing human ovary.”
There is no clear way to currently know how the fetal tissues were obtained by Conception. Since Conception is funded by private means, restrictions regarding federal dollars being used for research involving aborted babies are not much of a concern for the company.
Regulations, or lack thereof, on research involving abortion victims are generally regulated by state legislators under the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (UAGA). California allows for research on aborted babies' tissue. MIT reported that at the time, Krisiloff “declined to say where Conception gets its tissue donations currently.”
However, during the same April 2023 IVG conference, several other scientists explicitly mentioned using aborted babies and human embryos donated from IVF in their studies and research, including:
Ali Brivanlou with Rockefeller University and co-founder of Rumi Scientific, who spoke on previous studies that focused on advancements in research involving primordial germ cells (PGCs) that are needed in the IVG progress using donated embryos from an IVF clinic.
Azim Surani with University of Cambridge and the Gurdon Institute, who specifically stated, “we can do some studies, we can get these aborted fetuses…from about week 5, they’re quite rare at week 5 but we can get some, and we can take these embryos and we can take out these genital ridges, the developing gonads, and we can sort primordial germ cells from them.”
Cornell University professor Paula Cohen, who spoke of using aborted babies and grafting the fetal ovaries onto mice, noting how studying meiosis is important for IVG use, stated, “We have actually taken human fetal ovaries and xenographed them into the mouse initially to look at meiosis, but we were really surprised to see that within 10 weeks these ovaries go through to complete follicular genesis.”
Mitinori Saitou with Kyoto University, who helped with the successful mice pup experiment and admitted to using aborted human babies along with monkey embryos while working on studying human in-vitro oogenesis (IVO) technology advancement (also helpful for the progress of IVG). He stated during his presentation, “We took out aborted fetal embryos around 10 or 11 week post-fertilization or 8-week monkey post-fetal embryos” to study ovarian cells.
Should humanity pursue a technology simply because it has the capacity to do so? As the scientific community rushes to redefine human reproduction, society must ask itself a fundamental question: what does it mean to be human?
Live Action News is pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective.
Our work is possible because of our donors. Please consider giving to further our work of changing hearts and minds on issues of life and human dignity.
Contact editor@liveaction.org for questions, corrections, or if you are seeking permission to reprint any Live Action News content.
Guest Articles: To submit a guest article to Live Action News, email editor@liveaction.org with an attached Word document of 800-1000 words. Please also attach any photos relevant to your submission if applicable. If your submission is accepted for publication, you will be notified within three weeks. Guest articles are not compensated (see our Open License Agreement). Thank you for your interest in Live Action News!
Cassy Cooke
·Human Interest
Nancy Flanders
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