- Researchers have succeeded in creating synthetic embryos for the first time, without stopping to first answer the question of if they should be created at all
- The embryos exist without the need for egg, sperm or sexual reproduction of any kind
- They were engineered from stem cells and, while they do not have a beating heart, gut or beginnings of a brain, they have primordial cells that are the precursors to egg and sperm
- Researchers are only legally allowed to grow human embryos up to 14 days, but synthetic human embryos aren’t subject to the 14-day rule
- While the implications for research are exciting, there are significant ethical implications, since the synthetic embryos could, theoretically, grow into a human
[Editor’s Note: The short answer is, “NO!” These fake embryos should not be used for research or anything else. They should not exist. Unfortunately, they DO exist now which is why we are publishing this article. Dr. Joseph Mercola dives into the details and conflicts to help us gain an understanding so we can better oppose this. And while I don’t agree with everything Dr. Mercola writes — just as I know not everyone will agree with what I write — it’s important nonetheless to have this conversation now before it’s too late to address it.]
Researchers have succeeded in creating synthetic embryos for the first time, without stopping to first answer the question of if they should be created at all. The embryos exist without the need for egg, sperm or sexual reproduction of any kind. They were engineered from stem cells and provide a window into the earliest days of human development.1
The scientists behind the synthetic embryos, including Magdalena Żernicka-Goetz, of the University of Cambridge and the California Institute of Technology, hope to study this so-called “black box” development period, as researchers are only legally allowed to grow human embryos up to 14 days.2
“We can create human embryo-like models by the reprogramming of [embryonic stem] cells,” Żernicka-Goetz said at the 2023 International Society for Stem Cell Research meeting in Boston.3 Further, the synthetic human embryos aren’t subject to the 14-day rule.4
Synthetic Human Embryos Form Distinct Cell Lines
The embryos were grown to the gastrulation stage of development, when distinct cell lines develop. While the embryos do not have a beating heart, gut or beginnings of a brain, they have primordial cells that are the precursors to egg and sperm. Żernicka-Goetz told The Guardian:5
“Our human model is the first three-lineage human embryo model that specifies amnion and germ cells, precursor cells of egg and sperm. It’s beautiful and created entirely from embryonic stem cells.”
The preprint study, which hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet, was published in bioRxiv,6 alongside a similar study by stem-cell biologist Jacob Hanna and colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.7 Both studies have received some criticism that the synthetic embryos aren’t as advanced as they initially appear. Nature reported:8
“Alfonso Martinez Arias, a developmental biologist at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain, says there is ‘nothing’ in the results described by Zernicka-Goetz and her colleagues that can be considered analogous to real 14-day embryos.
‘What we can see is masses of cells separated into compartments, but no embryo-like organization,’ he says. He thinks that the over-expression of some genes needed to produce the extra-embryonic cell types ‘confuses what cells do,’ and argues that the results do not show anything that goes beyond earlier work.”
However, others have praised the work. Hanna’s team, which also produced a synthetic embryo-like structure from human stem cells, also stopped their experiment at the 14-day cutoff for human embryos, but Żernicka-Goetz and others have argued that allowing the synthetic embryos to develop longer would be useful to science.9
Speaking with Science, developmental biologist Jesse Veenvliet of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics said of the synthetic embryo developed by Hanna’s team, “The similarity to the natural embryo is remarkable, almost uncanny.”10
- Hand-curated links from conservative and Christian sites — NO legacy media garbage links. Patriots get their news every day at JDRucker.com
Prior to the synthetic human embryo, researchers created synthetic mouse embryos.11 This was less than a year ago, showing how rapidly the field is moving. While the implications for research are exciting, there are significant ethical implications, since the synthetic embryos could, at least theoretically, grow into a human. Robin Lovell-Badge, told The Guardian:12
“The idea is that if you really model normal human embryonic development using stem cells, you can gain an awful lot of information about how we begin development, what can go wrong, without having to use early embryos for research.”
Legal and Ethical Implications Are Significant
While it’s currently against the law to attempt to implant a synthetic embryo into a human womb, the science is rapidly outpacing related regulations. “If the whole intention is that these models are very much like normal embryos, then in a way they should be treated the same,” Lovell-Badge told The Guardian. “Currently in legislation they’re not. People are worried about this.”13
In animal studies, synthetic embryos implanted into mice wombs did not survive. Similarly, when synthetic monkey embryos were implanted into monkey wombs, pregnancies were induced, although the embryos spontaneously stopped developing after a few days.14
However, if the synthetic embryos could one day grow into humans, we’d be entering into uncharted legal and ethical territory. Ethicist J. Benjamin Hurlbut of Arizona State University told Science that synthetic embryos represent “a matter of significant moral discussion and of significant moral concern.”15
Are We Headed for Mechanical Wombs?
Scientists are already working on how to grow life outside of a human womb and, in 2021, Hanna and colleagues grew a mouse embryo in a mechanical womb for about half of a typical gestational term — a time period equal to a human embryo at 5 weeks.16
Growing mouse embryos “ex utero,” the researchers said, is a valuable tool to investigate embryonic development in detail,17 but it comes with serious ethical questions, including might humans be next?18
The answer is yes, as Hanna told MIT Technology Review, “This sets the stage for other species. I hope that it will allow scientists to grow human embryos until week five.”19 Are we headed for an “era of motherless births,”20 in which babies are gown in laboratories via artificial wombs? It does seem to be where the research is rapidly headed.
The term ectogenesis, which describes gestation that occurs outside a human body, from conception to birth, was coined in 1924 by scientist J.B.S. Haldane.21 But it’s only now, nearly a century later, that technology is nearing the point of making this a reality. Haldane predicted ectogenesis would make up more than 70% of human births by 2074.22
First, however, will likely be partial ectogenesis, a field being rapidly pursued as a means to extend viability of extremely premature babies. Not only has artificial amniotic fluid been developed, but the layer of cells in the uterus that nourishes the pregnancy, known as the endometrium, is also being developed as a cell culture.
This paves the way for partial ectogenesis and then full-fledged ectogenesis in the not-so-distant future. According to the Genetic Literacy Project:23
“The convergence of these technologies will make it possible to transfer a developing human into a system that includes the placenta and umbilical cord and supplies all consumables (oxygen and food), and removes all waste, directly through the blood. Thus, survival and continuing development would not depend on the lungs and other organs being ready yet to do their job.
Applying such a system to fetus delivered in the middle of pregnancy would constitute real partial ectogenesis. Furthermore, since bypassing the developing, not fully functional organs, stands to improve survival substantially, and might even decrease the costs of extreme premature birth, the movement of the technology from research to clinic is inevitable.
Once that happens, there will be no obstacle against pushing the limit further, toward full ectogenesis. But there will be no obstacle to pushing the limit akin to how lung viability has placed an obstacle to conventional pre-term care. At some point, an in vitro fertilized egg could be planted directly into the artificial womb, with no need for a natural uterus even for the early stages.”
Scientists Develop Robot ‘Skin’ Made From Human Cells
As robots continue to rollout into society, scientists are looking for ways to make them more human. This, they say, will promote their acceptance and further interactions with actual humans. Writing in the journal Matter, researchers explained:24
“Humanoids are robots created with human forms or characteristics; these robots also have the potential to seamlessly interact with human beings. By replicating the appearances and functions (e.g., self-healing) of human beings, humanoids have the potential to establish more harmonic and natural human-robot interactions.”
To facilitate this, the team, from the University of Tokyo, Japan, created living skin for robots, made with human cells. They submerged a three-joint robotic finger into a solution of collagen and human dermal fibroblasts, which conformed to the finger, forming a primer for the next layer of cells, human epidermal keratinocytes. Together, the layers formed a skin-like surface that can even self-heal if wounded.
While the researchers were pleased with the outcome, stating, “We are surprised by how well the skin tissue conforms to the robot’s surface,” they explained, “This work is just the first step toward creating robots covered with living skin.”25 Next, they intend to add sensory neurons, hair follicles, nails and sweat glands to make the robots appear just like humans.
“I think living skin is the ultimate solution to give robots the look and touch of living creatures since it is exactly the same material that covers animal bodies,” study author Shoji Takeuchi said in a news release.26
Will People Be Turned Into Cyborgs?
As robots continue to look increasingly real, scientists are also working on making people more robotic. A May 2021 project report by the U.K. Ministry of Defense, created in partnership with the German Bundeswehr Office for Defense Planning, is titled “Human Augmentation — The Dawn of a New Paradigm, a Strategic Implications Project.”27
As noted in the report, “Human augmentation has the potential to … change the meaning of what it means to be a human.” Merging humans with machines is precisely what Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), has stated is the goal of The Fourth Industrial Revolution.28
Schwab dreams of a world in which humans are connected to the cloud, able to access the internet through their own brains. This, of course, also means that your brain would be accessible to people who might like to tinker with your thoughts, emotions, beliefs and behavior. The report further explains:29
“Human augmentation will become increasingly relevant, partly because it can directly enhance human capability and behavior and partly because it is the binding agent between people and machines.
Future wars will be won, not by those with the most advanced technology, but by those who can most effectively integrate the unique capabilities of both people and machines. The importance of human-machine teaming is widely acknowledged but it has been viewed from a techno-centric perspective.
Human augmentation is the missing part of this puzzle. Thinking of the person as a platform and understanding our people at an individual level is fundamental to successful human augmentation.”
In May 2023, Elon Musk’s brain-chip company, Neuralink, received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a human clinical trial — the first of its kind. The company plans to implant a brain chip into a tetraplegic or paraplegic patient in 2023.30
It’s likely that one day transhumanism will involve the use of technologies that are physically embedded in the human body or brain to offer superhuman cognition or forms of mind control. Gene-edited babies have also been developed. In 2018, He Jiankui, a Chinese scientist, modified the DNA of human embryos during in vitro fertilization by disabling a gene called CCR5, which could potentially make the babies resistant to infection with HIV.31
The babies, twin girls known as Lulu and Nana, were born in 2018,32 and a third baby with an edited CCR5 gene was born in 2019.33 He’s team received major backlash from the highly controversial move, as while the technology to genetically edit human babies has existed for some time, ethical considerations had stopped researchers from tinkering with the human germline.
He went to jail for three years as a result of the “illegal medical practice,”34 but the momentum to create lab-grown designer babies continues. A February 1, 2022, article in Futurism, for instance, announced that Chinese scientists developed an artificial intelligence nanny robot to care for fetuses grown inside an artificial womb.35
As transhumanism gets underway in earnest, there’s little doubt that growing synthetic human embryos is only the beginning — and ethical considerations about growing babies in laboratories will be largely ignored in favor of advancing technology.
Sound off about this on the End Medical Tyranny Substack.
- 1, 2, 3, 5, 12, 13, 14 The Guardian June 14, 2023
- 4, 8 Nature June 16, 2023
- 6 bioRxiv June 15, 2023, doi: 10.1101/2023.06.15.545082
- 7 bioRxiv June 15, 2023, doi: 10.1101/2023.06.14.544922
- 9, 10, 15 Science June 17, 2023
- 11 Cell August 1, 2022
- 16, 18 Popular Mechanics March 18, 2021
- 17 Nature March 17, 2021
- 19 MIT Technology Review March 17, 2021
- 20, 21, 22, 23 Genetic Literacy Project April 22, 2022
- 24 Matter June 9, 2022
- 25, 26 EurekAlert! June 9, 2022
- 27, 29 Human Augmentation — The Dawn of a New Paradigm, A Strategic Implications Project May 2021
- 28 WEF The Fourth Industrial Revolution
- 30 Reuters June 16, 2023
- 31 Vox November 30, 2018
- 32 BBC News June 3, 2019
- 33 CNBC May 21, 2019
- 34 DW April 20, 2023
- 35 Futurism February 1, 2022
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.