Like a Virgin (37 page)
Authors: Aarathi Prasad
What were once invisible, indivisible seeds of life will act as portals rather than as ingredients to be brought together to create a child. The constituent, beautiful machinery of which eggs
are built will very soon broker successful pregnancies and healthier babies – with three genetic parents. This fast advancing area of research involves transferring the male and female
parents’ DNA into a donor egg, which already contains a package of DNA from the donor, in a tiny organ in the egg called a mitochondrion. The child born from this process would inherit a
fraction of his or her genetic code from the egg donor, breaking the rules of reproduction as we know them today.
There already are children born from permutations of
biological, gestational, and genetic input from more than two adults, and this will increasingly be humanity’s
future. Whether or not medical intervention soon gives women and men the choice of having biological children with a person of their same sex or completely on their own – unrestricted by the
physical limits of the human body as well as the socio-economic limits on the human soul – the reproduction of the future is set to rewrite much of the fabric of human society. Male plus
female equals baby will no longer be our only path forward. As we conceive the once inconceivable and take full control of how and when we bring the next generation into the world, we are sure to
dislodge many notions of sex and gender along the way.
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