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The number of eggs women have is far from "quite low". How many do you think they need? A woman menstruates once a month until menopause, from say age 14 till 5
by XorNot 3y ago
The number of eggs women have is far from "quite low". How many do you think they need? A woman menstruates once a month until menopause, from say age 14 till 55. So you would estimate a need for 492 total eggs.
A woman is born with 1 million eggs, and has about 300,000 left by puberty.
Which is to say: developing the eggs is not a limiting factor in getting them from women.
- runsWphotons 3y agoGetting eggs from women is hard because the current technology is very invasive and expensive, and there are challenges storing and maintaining the eggs. A technology that allows the creation of as many eggs as you want from skin samples totally changes all that, and removes the limitations for many reproductive technologies.
- XorNot 3y agoAbsolutely. No contention there. I'm just contesting that the total number of eggs in a woman is meaningfully finite though: the X at birth thing is thrown around a lot without thinking about the actual numbers involved.
- Vecr 3y agoActually, I'm not sure about the real situation. The organizations who fund large grants apparently claim that's a reason why they don't like human cloning, but it could be a cover for other reasons they don't want to talk about.