I've been doing a LOT of thinking and just last night I watched a documentary about how one day it may be possible to clone body parts for transplants. It's all very interesting, but then I thought, wait.. if they can clone body parts, doesn't that include a biological guy's downstairs? If they could do that and then find a way to transplant that body part to you, wouldn't that be like having a fully functioning.. I don't know what term to use because I don't know how to offend anyone. But, think of it this way, you'd be able to have kids of your own just like any other biological guy would. Is this idea really possible? Because it's given me some hope on having kids of my own one day. Any thoughts on this?

While we're being hypothetical about this, I assume that if you had cloned gonads, you'd be fathering a child with the genes of whoever's gonads were cloned. Or how does the body incorporate genes into sperm? I'm intrigued.

I guess so. But if it's someone from your family (this is a what if) like your cousin, then the child would be related to you and also possibly look like you. It's the closest you can get.

I don't want to throw cold water on the idea, but your brain would also have to know how to run the parts, which hormones and so on to send out in order to make them work properly - so it would be much more complex than just adding the undercarriage, you'd need a cockpit refit too, and pilot retraining. It seems to me that it would be very tricky to make it work properly, given how hard it already is to get even IVF to work in bodies that are already biologically female, for example.

It was just a thought... still a possibility I hope.

we are on the way to that but it wont be available for a really really long time because this technology will first be used to save lives by making organs for transplant.

From what I know this is actually a theoretical possibility, though it would likely reach the trans community later than the cis community due to potential further complications. Plus there's probably perceived "ethical dilemmas" (as is usually the case) when such scientific and medical breakthroughs are applied to the trans community.

As you've pointed out in the original post, they're working on being able to clone different parts of the body for transplants. There's also people working on regenerating nerves and nerve connections (as was brought up in this forum not too long ago). They've been able to produce human sperm in mouse testes using stem cell injections (I can link to articles, at the least, if anyone wants). Male and female anatomy really are not that different for there to be any real issue there as far as I can think so long as they can get the nerves and everything working properly.

Really, nerve connection and transplant rejection are the biggest obstacles I can see to this (with admittedly what little thought I put to the idea), but that would be a concern for this sort of transplant regardless. Otherwise, depending upon how exactly this works, creating male genitals -- particularly functioning male genitals -- for a genetically XX person may be an issue as well.

I think only time will tell for sure whether this is a possibility or not.

Noah I'm very interested in the articles, thanks and yeah I can see how all sorts of problems would arise. But... isn't it worth a shot at least?

Also how long do you think it will take for this to be possible?

Quote from: Josh T on July 27, 2011, 01:41:26 AM
Also how long do you think it will take for this to be possible?

IMO at least 3 or 4 decades

I'm close to this in the field that I work in.

The break throughs have been massive and the problems are immense.

My take is that if we could get something simple (being a little sarcastic) like a cloned cornea from stem cells, that is functional and transplantable in the next 20 years it would be good. Making cardiac cells that can be transplanted into an existing heart is achievable now. or very close to. Linking major nerve groups is achievable in rats at the moment and has been for some years. There is an animal model were the spinal cord is partially severed to produce rear limb paralysis, and this can and has been reversed. Cloning brain cells to treat Parkinson's etc has been achieved with very mixed results.

Growing a whole organ, with multiple parts such as male tackle is science fiction.

Sorry

Cindy

I think it would be cool to clone my Mr. Happy... He has a cute freckle on his head... But I would want to be able to trade it for a Ms. happy 

Quote from: Cindy James on July 27, 2011, 03:26:34 AM
Growing a whole organ, with multiple parts such as male tackle is science fiction.

And again, even if it were possible, getting the host body to be able to use said tackle properly to produce viable sperm (which involves a whole network of neurological and endocrine shenanigans) is another layer of incredible complexity on top of just producing the tissue.

Totally hun.

I think, and I think it close to impossible but within range of imagination is to transplant a human brain into a donor. With current technology and how it is advancing the subject may have rudimentary  visual and auditory ability. But would be totally paralysed and unable to communicate. Not a procedure I would volunteer for.

Cindy

i dont think our brains would have problems using it and making a penis from XX DNA shouldnt be a problem as XY people can grow vaginas (androgen insensitivity syndrome) and other intersex peoples genitals dont match their DNA work.

I had a dream once. It was that you took a blood sample and gave it to a lab, and then they used it to determine your hormone levels and such things. With this knowledge, they calculated what changes would happen if you'd been born as a male instead of a female (deterministically, like if one could calculate die results by knowing exactly how it was thrown, air pressure, and all other factors). They then asked you if there were any effects you'd like them to remove (say that they discovered that if you'd been born male, you'd been blind, then you could ask them to keep your eyesight). Then, they programmed these orders into a set of nano-robots, injected the nanobots into you and put you to sleep for a week so the robots could do their work. Then, you'd wake up with exactly the body you'd have if you had been born a boy/girl/whatever. It would be pretty cool if this was real, right?

Biggest problem for all new technologies is fogyism and anti science fanaticism 

I really hope they can do something with eye cloning and transplants with nanotechnology. I'd rather have new eyes than a penis.

With my admittedly apparently weak internet search skills, this is the most current and most descriptive, non-technical article I could find (though perhaps someone else with better search skills can find more): Mice produce human sperm to raise hope for infertile men.

Advancements seem to be coming rapidly, but viability takes longer to establish, which is why it can be years at least before something is done in a lab and brought in to practice -- or even why some things can be done in a lab but never make it beyond that: there's no viability. That becomes even more difficult when advances are combined, and genitals would be difficult enough to produce without worrying about functionality. As said, only time will tell if it's even a possibility, and it would take a lot of people dedicated to this goal specifically to determine that. It's anyone's guess when or if this might happen, and it's really a testament to nature just how intensive and complicated it would be to produce those sort of results.

It might be science fiction, but science fiction has several times been brought to life in one form or another. Who knows whether this might be one of those cases at some point in the future.

The problem with the XX DNA would be the further complication due to the fact that it's not as straight-forward as XY. In fact, sexual characteristics in general aren't as straight-forward as XX or XY, but it becomes even more complicated, from my understanding, when one is trying to create an individual body part separate from the body and/or when the DNA is contrary to the sexual characteristic. To put it simply: there's more involved.

Just to chime in, I remember reading an article a little while back... my memory's a little hazy but from what I recall, scientists were able to switch off a chromosome in female lab rats (or mice, whichever) which caused their bodies to begin producing their own testosterone.

I'm going to see if I can dig it up again, it was pretty interesting.

Edit: Here it is http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/genetics/article6952050.ece