How lineage (or nasab) might soon lose its meaning
Yesterday, an Israeli team announced that they created a 14-day old embryo, completely from stem cells alone, without the involvement of sperms or eggs.
It has all the organs that you expect in a "natural" embryo of that age, down to the fact that it even excretes hormones that passes an ordinary pregnancy test.
The thing is, we already have technology capable of converting any ordinary cell to a stem cell. This effectively means that there's a clear path from literally taking dirt from the hands of two people, and creating a baby out of them.
For now, the problem of artificial womb is yet unsolved, but there's no fundmamental reason why it won't happen in a few decades. Even without it, the freeing of human reproduction from the shackles of gametes, will change society fundamentally.
One of the biggest objections to homosexuality is that it doesn't result in procreation. With no need of gametes, gays will be able to have children simply from DNA in their skin cells.
Ultimately, the entire concept of heredity will lose a lot of it's meaning, with advances in genetic engineering. If you can pick and choose which genes you want in your child, how much does it matter whether the genes come from your cells or from someone else's?
What will parentage or ancestry mean when you can custom-order a genetic mix as your child? Will it feel any different than adoption? People take so much pride in their lineage today but tell me, how will you find Syed genes, or Patahan genes or Brahmin genes? What will you base your ancestral pride on?
This new world is ultimately inevitable (short of an AI apocalypse) but even today, the mere realisation of such a possibility itself should make us re-evaluate our outdated dogmas around caste, gender and religion.
But it won't. Ye sirf Qayamat ke aasaar hain 😁