Original subtitles

Freeman: Every single person who has ever lived

was created from the genes of one man and one woman.

But technology is on the brink

of rewriting the rules of procreation.

We could soon make children from two fathers or from two mothers.

Babies could grow outside the womb.

We might even create hybrid people --

part human, part animal.

Human reproduction, unchanged for millions of years,

is about to undergo a revolution.

Will sex become extinct?

Space, time, life itself.

The secrets of the cosmos lie through the wormhole.

Subtital By RA_One

Sex is amazing.

Why?

Well, because without sex, none of us would be here.

We are all descendants

of the very first human male and female,

the people the Bible calls Adam and Eve.

And for almost all of human history,

the way we have made babies has not changed at all.

But a brave new world of human reproduction

is just around the corner.

New technology and our evolving biology

are about to rewrite the future of sex

and change the age-old roles of men and women.

When I was in school, I wanted to try out for the track team,

so I thought I'd practice with a guaranteed win --

against a girl.

On your mark. Get set.

Go!

Go, go, go, go, go!

Well, to my surprise, she won -- by a lot.

In fact, she went on to become a olympic champion.

Whoo! Whoo-hoo!

Men and women have always competed

in the age-old battle of the sexes.

What will happen to humanity if nature picks a winner?

For the past half billion years, nearly all complex life

has reproduced through sexual recombination of their genes.

Birds do it.

Bees do it.

Even kangaroos do it.

But geneticist Jenny graves thinks the days

of humans doing it to make offspring

could be numbered.

She's peering into our future by looking at the sex genes

of these distant cousins.

Dear little thing.

Absolutely gorgeous.

And you can see it's a little boy.

Yes, I certainly can.

Because he's well-endowed.

Well-endowed indeed.

Kangaroos don't look much like humans, but in fact,

they have pretty much the same set of genes --

about, you know, 20,000 or so genes --

doing the same jobs.

Freeman: All living things are built from genes

that are made up of DNA.

Those genes are coiled up into clusters called chromosomes.

We have 23 pairs of chromosomes.

Gender of both humans and kangaroos

depends on just one pair.

Girls have two "X" Chromosomes.

Boys have one "X" And one "Y."

we inherited this scheme from a common ancestor.

Kangaroos are much more like the ancestral mammal,

and they haven't changed nearly as much,

so they give us a window on the past,

and they really tell us a lot about our own genome.

Freeman: By looking at the sex chromosomes of kangaroos,

Jenny can see how much our own have changed.

She can also plot the future of our sex chromosomes.

And according to Jenny, it's bad news.

Human males, like her grandson Felix,

are on the road to extinction.

[ Laughs ]

All right.

Well, I'm gonna build a chromosome

out of blocks of genes.

Felix, maybe you can hand me some more blue blocks.

Both men and women carry an "X" Chromosome.

In the microscopic world of DNA, it's a skyscraper,

a tower of around 1,000 genes.

But the "Y" Chromosome, exclusive to men,

is more of a run-down shack.

So, this is a female with two "X" Chromosomes,

one from the mother, one from the father,

and then this is a male.

He's only got one "X" Chromosome,

and he's got a much smaller "Y" Chromosome.

It's got hardly any genes on it.

All female eggs contain a single "X" Chromosome.

Of the billions of sperm cells a man sends towards a woman's egg,

half contain an "X," The other half a single, puny "Y."

when a sperm cell with an "X" Chromosome

gets to the egg first, the result is a baby girl

with one "X" From mom and one "X" From dad.

What happens is

these two "X" Chromosomes get together, and they swap bits.

For instance, that bit there swaps with that bit there,

and then maybe this bit swaps with that bit,

and you end up with something that looks like that.

And this is really important

because it means that the "X" Chromosomes

can repair themselves.

In women, any harmful genetic mutations on the "X" Chromosome

can be swapped out with healthy genes

before it gets passed to the next generation.

But men have no way to repair their "Y" Chromosome.

There's no second copy to fall back on.

This "Y" Chromosome doesn't swap pieces at all,

so it just stays in a little bundle,

and this is a bad thing for the "Y" Chromosome

because if there are mistakes and errors and mutations,

that's too bad.

There's no way of fixing them up.

And eventually what happens is you actually lose genes.

And then this little teeny-weeny "Y"

is at great risk of being lost altogether.

And so, in maybe four or five million years,

there'll be nothing left.

Freeman: Without a "Y" Chromosome,

men would become infertile.

Would the extinction of humanity follow?

Evolutionary biologist levi morran wants to know

what happens when a species can no longer sexually reproduce.

He's working out the details by working out.

There are times when I'm working on a specific project

or something that's really driving me forward,

and running allows me to really focus in

on everything that I need to be thinking about.

Freeman: Levi is chasing an answer

to the most fundamental mystery of sex --

why do we and so many other species do it?

He thinks he can find the answer

by closely observing sexual activity under a microscope.

These microscopic worms, or nematodes,

are known as c. Elegans.

Their sex life is incredibly simple.

It's actually pretty sad.

Sometimes the males will basically take their tail,

attach it to their head, think that they are a female,

and mate with themselves for hours on end

without realizing it.

Freeman: Males are simple,

but their female counterparts have more complex needs.

Female c. Elegans are not exactly female.

They're hermaphrodites.

They can reproduce by coupling with a male,

just like human females do,

or they can reproduce by impregnating their own eggs

with their own sperm.

Levi can control the sex drive of nematode females

by flicking a few switches in their DNA.

He can make them always opt for sex

or always reproduce without males.

To see what a difference sex makes,

levi subjects these hermaphrodites

to the hard forces of natural selection

by making them cross an ocean...Of disease.

Morran: If you look at this petri dish here,

what you can see is that this red bacteria up here --

it's highly virulent to the nematodes.

It's very likely to kill them.

And they have to swim through this bacteria

to get to their normal food source,

which is at the bottom here.

Freeman: Nematodes that reproduce without sex

endure the plague for 30 generations

but are not able to develop a defense

against their toxic invaders.

Their ranks are decimated.

Now, levi sends another colony of worms

across the valley of death.

This time, he's genetically engineered them

to reproduce only through sex.

Morran: We again put them on this plate

that has the bacterial parasite and had them crawl across.

See if they could survive exposure to the parasite

and then reproduce in their normal environment.

And if you look at the screen here,

what you see is a lot of them survived that exposure.

Freeman: Levi's experiment shows

that the sex allows a population

to evolve better defenses against diseases.

He believes that over millions of years of our evolution,

sex is what has kept us from being wiped out by disease.

As levi knows from his sport of running,

it's all about staying ahead.

Imagine that I'm a population, and each step I take forward

is a generation in evolutionary time.

Freeman: Reproduction without sex

is a lot like running in a straight line.

A species can get from "A" To "B" Quickly and efficiently,

but if you run in a straight line,

a predatory parasite can easily pick up on your path.

Sexual reproduction is like following a zigzag path.

It's slower, but the mixing of genes

constantly shifts the species' evolutionary path,

making it hard for a parasite to latch on

and giving a species its best chance to survive.

There are all kinds of pathogen parasites out there

that could potentially track our populations,

and so if we have genetic diversity,

then it allows a population the potential to adapt and change

with those parasites.

Freeman: Sex has been vital to our survival.

But sex is bound to change.

It can happen in a million years

if the "Y" Chromosome disappears,

or it could happen within the next decade.

This stem-cell researcher may have a way

to let any two people, regardless of their gender,

make a baby.

How do you make a baby?

Well, you need to fertilize an egg,

a process that always used to start with boy meets girl.

But for the last 30 years,

doctors have also been able to fertilize an egg in a test tube.

But science is about to offer a radically new way

to make people.

You start with an egg from a man or a sperm cell from a woman.

This cell may change the future of human sex.

It's a cell from ordinary human skin.

But fertility expert Renee reijo pera

of Stanford university

is trying to transform it into a cell

that could create a new human.

For most of human history, we've thought

that as we develop, we have the cells that we have.

If we have skin cells, they're going to make more skin cells.

In 2007, there was a major breakthrough.

We can take skin cells,

and we can move them back to the beginning of life --

the embryonic state.

Freeman: These skin cells are bioengineered

to become embryonic stem cells,

cells that exist naturally in a human embryo.

They have the power to turn into any type of cell

in the human body --

heart muscle, neurons, even lung cells.

Other researchers are trying to use them

to repair damaged organs.

But Renee has a different plan --

to sculpt cell types our bodies normally could not.

So, stem cells are a lot like Clay.

They need to be given instructions

in what cell type they will differentiate to.

They can become any of 216 different cell types.

Clay is similar in that if a sculptor takes the Clay,

they can actually direct the Clay

into any structure that you want.

A stem cell takes directions

to become a cell with a unique job

from a myriad of proteins and other organic chemicals.

Renee and her team wanted to make sperm and egg cells,

so they set to find the specific chemical instructions

that would make stem cells develop down that route.

Pera: To make a sperm cell from stem cells,

what we've done is we've taken skin cells from men,

and we've reprogrammed them to embryonic cells

and then used bone proteins to direct the stem cells

down the sperm-cell lineage,

kind of like starting with a ball of Clay.

We start with a small ball of Clay,

and we try to get the cells to differentiate along a lineage.

Freeman: Renee is halfway through the process

of activating the instructions inside the "Y" Chromosome

of an infertile man's stem cell

so that she can craft from it a healthy, potent sperm cell.

But since males have an "X" Chromosome,

Renee believes a similar procedure

could take a male patient's stem cell

and turn it into an egg.

Pera: It is possible that someday,

same-sex couples could have their own children,

especially if the couple is comprised of two men

because then one of the men could provide the egg

and the other the sperm.

Freeman: Renee believes that eventually,

she could make sperm cells from a woman's stem cell.

But it's a challenge

because it requires importing sperm-making instructions

from the "Y" Chromosome of a man.

It's a little harder to imagine same-sex couples

that are comprised of two women

being able to have their own children at this time

just because of the number of genes

that are on the "Y" Chromosome that are required to make sperm,

probably around 50 or 100.

It's not impossible,

but it's just much less likely in the next 10 years or so.

Freeman: Thanks to the work of Renee and her colleagues,

the age-old biology of sexual reproduction

is about to undergo a momentous change.

With stem-cell reproduction,

any two human beings could conceive a child

regardless of their gender or age.

But not everyone thinks it's a good idea.

I'm always surprised how many people --

I mean, I get bad calls about that.

People -- they're so worried about the world being taken over

by people that are now reproducing in a dish.

I think that our technology will be wonderful

for infertile couples,

but I think couples that are well-able

to have children naturally will continue to do so.

Freeman: Let's say a female sperm

and a male egg could be created in a lab.

Couples in any combination of genders could conceive a child.

But the fetus would still need to spend nine months

inside a woman --

unless we could grow our young in an artificial womb.

We all began our lives in the same place -- a woman's womb.

It was nine months of blissful ignorance for most of us

but not for our mothers.

What if women didn't have to carry the burden of pregnancy?

A radical shift in reproduction is already happening.

Marine biologist Nick otway has just brought

living creatures into the world in an completely new way.

We've done something that was rather strange,

rather abnormal, and challenging, too,

to think about what are the implications in the future.

Freeman: Nick has built a machine

that gives birth to living sharks.

Otway: We're looking at a gray box,

which is actually an artificial uterus.

We shorten it to an a.U.,

and we developed this -- designed it --

to actually take embryos out of a particular species of shark

and see if we can continue their development

in an artificial environment.

Freeman: Nick built his a.U. -- His mechanical womb --

to restore the population

of the critically endangered grey nurse shark.

It was a mission that came straight from the top levels

of the Australian government.

Otway: One minister actually challenged me

to come up with a breeding program.

He said, "Okay, come back in six weeks,

and don't tell me you can't do it."

Freeman: Human beings have just about mastered

keeping adult fish alive outside of their natural habitat

by engineering aquariums.

Chemicals are balanced, ph levels kept in check,

waste products cleaned out, and nutrients delivered on schedule.

But keeping fish alive that haven't been born yet

is a whole new challenge.

Otway: The a.U. Is a small aquarium,

and so you got to create the environment for the embryos.

They're delicate.

They have specific requirements,

and the mother is not providing that -- you are.

Freeman: Unlike an adult fish,

the needs of delicate shark embryos

drastically change as they grow.

Otway: Sharks use a complex uterine fluid

early on in development and subsequent --

three months into development,

they switch to a seawater environment,

which mum pumps in the seawater.

So we really do need to understand that complex fluid --

the composition and how we need to maintain it

in an artificial environment,

and that's something that's not been done before.

Freeman: Nick programmed his artificial uterus

to change its chemistry from bodily fluid to seawater

in line with a mother shark's natural rhythm.

Experimenting with the severely endangered grey nurse shark

was too risky,

so Nick calibrated the first run of his artificial womb

for a more common species -- the wobbegong shark.

Otway: Wobbegong sharks are easily handled in captivity

and easily maintained in captivity.

We already knew that they had actually bred in captivity.

All those things meant

that we could actually have a smaller animal

that we could use as a model species,

and, of course, it wasn't critically endangered.

Freeman: To grow baby wobbegongs,

Nick harvested the growing embryos from a pregnant female

and transferred them to his artificial womb.

He kept constant watch over the tiny unborn pups,

precisely managing the conditions to keep them alive.

Otway: I think you become attached to these guys.

They're sort of animals that you've taken away from mum,

and you hope that nothing detrimental occurs.

Freeman: The procedure was a resounding success.

After 9 weeks,

Nick's lab gave birth to 14 perfectly formed shark pups.

Nick believes that what is possible for sharks today

is possible for humans tomorrow.

It's all a matter of knowing how and when a mother's womb

changes its chemical composition.

[ Crying ]

Otway: I think technology has come leaps and bounds

in just a few years, and around the corner,

we could be looking at some major changes.

I could potentially see preterm infants

possibly going back further in the preterm,

but even then, I think there's still ethical questions

one has to ask about it.

Freeman: Would a baby grown in a laboratory

be the same as an infant nurtured inside a woman?

Would society accept these children as equals

to those born from a natural womb?

Only time will answer the many questions

of growing our young outside a woman's uterus.

We may choose to face these questions sooner than you think.

An artificial human uterus could make miscarriages,

prenatal complications,

and death in childbirth horrors of the past.

[ Baby coos ]

When babies aren't just conceived in a test tube

but born in one,

and when any combination of people can create a child,

what will be the meaning of the word "Family?"

the family is the backbone of our society.

But what is a family?

Does it start with a man and a woman,

or, as some cultures say, a man and many women, or two women?

When technology transforms how children are born

and who their parents can be, what will our society look like?

Perhaps we can find a clue

in the societies of our closest animal relatives.

Frans de waal has dedicated his career

to studying the societies of the great apes.

[ Monkey screeches ]

In the wild, they must fight to survive and often die trying.

Chimpanzees kill each other over territory.

Wild chimpanzees are very competitive,

especially over rank among males --

who's gonna be the dominant male.

Freeman: What is true for chimps is often true for us.

Oh, no.

[ Sighs ] Shoot.

Freeman: Frans is trying to understand

what shapes the social roles of male and female primates.

De waal: Chimpanzee society is quite different

in that they have no family structure like humans do,

like male, female offspring.

It's usually just the females

who have the offspring and care for them.

Freeman: We share 98.5% of our genome with chimps.

But frans knows that chimps are not our only close relatives.

De waal: I was interested in chimpanzees,

and I worked with them over many years, and then I saw bonobos.

And people called them pygmy chimps at the time,

and they just considered them a small kind of chimps,

and I saw immediately that they were totally different --

in their behavior, in their appearance.

And so I couldn't believe

that people had sort of lumped them together,

and I wanted to know more about them.

Freeman: Just like chimps,

bonobos share 98.5% of their genes with humans.

But as frans observed them,

he discovered their society was utterly different from chimps.

Female bonobos are collectively dominant over males.

They're not individually dominant

because they are smaller, but as a group,

the females dominate the males.

[ Monkeys screeching ]

Freeman: Even though bonobo males

are physically larger and stronger than females,

the females form alliances that keep the peace.

Violence is rare, killing even more rare.

Females eat first and share food with the males.

And if any social crisis erupts,

the bonobos have a special way of relieving the stress.

De waal: Bonobos have sex almost all the time.

Females have sex with females.

Males have sex with males.

There is, of course, a lot of female-male sex going on.

And so, there's a lot more sex going on

in the bonobo society than in the chimpanzee society.

Sex serves as bonding between females,

preventing conflict, reconciling after conflicts.

And so, as a result, the bonobos are known

as sort of the hippies of the primate world,

like "Make love, not war" Kind of primates.

Freeman: Sex is the female bonobos' tool of choice

for building alliances.

De waal: The females will have some sexual relations

and do some bonding,

and they will become dominant over the male.

Freeman: Bonobos and chimps are genetically almost identical,

and yet their societies are completely different.

Frans believes that is because the role of males and females

are dictated not by genes but by a species' native environment.

De waal: Bonobos live in a richer forest

where there's more resources around.

In addition, they don't have competition from gorillas

who eat a lot of ground vegetation,

and so bonobos seem to have an easier time in their ecology

than the chimpanzees,

and that permits females to have

these effective coalitions

because a chimpanzee female is basically on her own

if she meets a male most of the time.

And so the bonobos are a more cohesive society.

Freeman: So, what can bonobos and chimps tell us

about the roles of men and women

and how they might change in the future?

In the past few centuries,

human ecology has dramatically changed.

Most people now have food and shelter,

like the bonobos do in their natural habitat,

and most of us have easy access to sex when we choose to.

Hmm.

Are we headed for a society

that's less like the warring and male-dominated chimps

and more like the free-loving and egalitarian bonobos...

[ Growling ]

...a society where children are raised by communities,

and when conflicts occur,

they are resolved with free-spirited sex?

De waal: Well, I think the abundance of food supply

makes things easier,

but it doesn't change, necessarily,

how we respond to each other

and how adults respond to children

or how adults respond to each other.

Freeman: Frans believes that,

although our environment does shape our behavior,

it takes many, many generations to do so.

The behavior of men and women today

harks back to the environment we lived in

tens of thousands of years ago, when our species first evolved.

De waal: Whereas chimpanzees and bonobos live in the forest,

humans left the forest and entered the Savannah.

The Savannah is a very dangerous place

because you cannot easily escape.

There's big lions there and hyenas,

and in the old days, they were even bigger than they are now,

and so humans needed to have a different kind of society.

The males got involved in protecting offspring.

As a result, you get pair bonding between male and female,

so you get a nuclear family,

and that's very different from the chimpanzee

or the bonobo, where the males are barely involved.

Freeman: Unlike the great apes,

who assigned all child-rearing to females,

human beings usually pair up to raise young.

This behavior is deeply rooted in our brain chemistry.

[ Growling ]

Neuroscientists have discovered that hormones, like oxytocin,

are released inside the brain when humans interact

with their bonded partner.

These hormones urge us to trust each other and bond.

And so, I think this pair-bonding framework

of the human species is very important,

and it's basically what sets us apart.

Frans believes that this drive to form our families

around a strong bond between two individuals

will not be altered for thousands of years to come.

Technology may change our food supply,

who's capable of reproduction, and how their young are born,

but frans predicts most of us will choose to reproduce

not through a community but rather with a partner.

After all, old habits are hard to break.

But sexual reproduction between only two people

may eventually be deemed inferior.

This doctor has found a way to make children healthier

by giving them three genetic parents.

Sex is the greatest creative force on the planet.

It mixes the DNA of two people

into novel and sometimes quite remarkable combinations.

Without sex, there would be no Michelangelo, no Michael Jordan.

The more you jumble up DNA,

the more creative possibilities there are.

So wouldn't it be better

if we could have more than two parents?

Doug turnbull of newcastle university is a medical rebel.

His team has invented a procedure

that can only be performed by breaking the law.

Turnbull: I think what we're doing --

and I think we've got to keep this into perspective --

is that we're trying to prevent serious disease.

I don't believe that it's right and proper

to be doing these sort of techniques

unless we're trying to prevent serious disease,

and I think that most scientists would feel exactly the same way.

Freeman: Doug's radical idea could cure a number of diseases

that occur when our cells can't get enough power.

Every cell in our body contains mitochondria.

They provide power by taking material

from the foods we eat and converting it to organic fuel.

But when mitochondria aren't working properly,

our cells can barely function.

Turnbull: That leads to the diseases

where it affects the central nervous system, the heart.

They can produce epilepsy, strokes, blindness,

deafness, dementia.

Freeman: Mitochondria have their own separate DNA,

and a child inherits all his or her mitochondria

from the mother's fertilized egg.

But Doug has discovered how to eliminate the disease.

He plans to transplant the embryo's nucleus,

where the majority of the child's DNA is stored,

into a new cell with healthy mitochondria.

While the law prevents him

from performing the full procedure in humans,

he often does similar work in his garden.

Turnbull: If we've got bad soil,

then a plant just simply won't grow.

If you've got an egg which has got unhealthy mitochondria,

then what it means is then that won't grow into a normal child.

It won't grow into a normal adult.

But if you've managed to transfer the material

from an egg which has got unhealthy mitochondria

into one which has got healthy mitochondria,

then that should allow a child to flourish,

and that's the principle.

We really want to move the nuclear genetic material

from something which is unhealthy

into a situation where it's healthy.

Freeman: Transplanting a seed from a pot of bad soil

to a pot of healthy soil is one thing.

Transferring the nucleus of a human embryo cell

into a donor cell requires the utmost care and precision.

If anything goes wrong, the infant that develops

from that embryo could have severe birth defects.

But Doug and his colleagues at the newcastle fertility clinic

are mastering the process

by performing legally permitted practice runs.

Turnbull: So, the eggs are collected from women

who are donating their eggs for research.

These eggs undergo an I.V.F. Procedure --

in vitro fertilization.

Freeman: Doug's team takes a donated egg

and removes its nucleus,

creating an empty vessel with healthy mitochondria.

They then transplant the nucleus of the defective cell

into the healthy vessel.

The law prevents them

from putting this egg back inside a mother.

But if they did,

that child would be unlike any other on earth.

She or he would have 23,000 nuclear genes

from two parents

and 13 mitochondrial genes from someone else.

Genetically speaking, the child would have three parents.

Many of Doug's opponents argue

that giving a child any amount of third-party genes,

on matter what the medical value,

is crossing a line.

Turnbull: It's 23,000 versus 13,

so you can see it is a tiny contribution.

And if it's preventing disease,

surely that's a good thing rather than a bad thing.

But for some people, that's unacceptable.

Freeman: Doug and his team are now involved

in a public consultation

to change the u.K. Government's law.

If they are permitted to move forward,

they believe they can eradicate mitochondrial disease.

It is something which is controversial,

and it will be against some people's religious views,

for example.

I think everybody should be allowed to have their views,

but I personally have a different view

because I look after these patients,

and I see just what a devastating effect

it has on the family.

Freeman: Doug's procedure could also be the beginning

of a new class of medicine,

one where devastating genetic diseases are subdued

by giving children genes from any number of third parties.

Our children may someday have one or two parents

that raise them and many more parents that made them.

But why stop there?

Why not make children healthier and stronger

using the best genes nature has to offer

regardless of which species they come from?

The sphinx, the mermaid, spider-man.

Hybrid creatures are the stuff of legend --

the brainpower of a human

married to the physical prowess of an animal.

But such creatures may not remain mythical for much longer.

Randy Lewis is a pioneer.

[ Goat bleats ]

On this remote farm in upstate Utah,

he's pushing scientific boundaries

and creating a new form of agriculture.

But there are those who say he's playing God.

Well, I got interested in chemistry

when I was in high school,

when a high school teacher that I had --

he allowed us to do some experiments on the side.

So, we were mixing some different kinds of chemicals

and sort of generated a cloud of steam and smoke

that went clear to the ceiling.

He just had a very perplexed look on his face and said,

"We better get the windows open,"

and really never said another word about it.

Freeman: Randy got away with it,

and today, he embraces the same fearless spirit.

His latest work is boldly mixing diverse genetic chemicals,

starting with the DNA of this creature.

Lewis: So, this is a golden orb-weaving spider.

As you can see, she's very docile.

The dragline silk, which is the silk

that you can sort of see waving up in the air

that she drags along behind herself as her lifeline,

is actually stronger than kevlar and more elastic than nylon.

Freeman: The immense strength and lightweight nature

of spider silk make it a miracle material.

Its industrial applications are almost endless.

But to date, no farmer has ever built a ranch

with millions of spiders producing lucrative silk.

Lewis: So, there are two real problems

in trying to farm spiders.

First is they're territorial,

and second, they're cannibalistic.

So, when you put a bunch of them together,

what happens is they just start killing each other.

Freeman: But ever the chemical tinkerer,

Randy realized he didn't need spiders to produce spider silk.

All he needed were the genetic chemicals

that give spiders their web-making ability.

Lewis: What we've done is identify the genes

that make up each of the different proteins

for the six different silks that the spider makes,

and we've been able to take those and clone them,

and then we can simply transfer them to another organism.

[ Goat bleats ]

Freeman: Randy's lab transfers these spider genes

into the DNA of fertilized goat eggs.

The goats grow to term

and are born with all the genes that a goat should have,

plus a little something extra.

We've spliced a spider-silk gene into the genome of the goat,

and we've put it in in a situation

where the only time that that gene is used

to make protein is when the goat's producing milk.

Freeman: Randy milks his spider goats

and takes their milk back to his lab,

where it is processed and filtered.

And from one milking alone,

Randy yields about 35 Miles of spider-goat silk.

His work could lead to a new industrial revolution

where groundbreaking biological materials

are produced by animals with genes from different species.

The DNA is the same in all organisms,

so, if you take a piece of DNA from any other organism,

in general, if you put it in the right context,

it's gonna be produced.

Freeman: Randy's work is also proof of the concept

that animal genes could be spliced into human DNA.

I think that one could imagine a situation

where you could take the spider-silk gene

and put it under some kind of control

where a human could produce it.

Freeman: These breakthroughs could lead

to a remarkable new evolution of humanity.

Today, we give our offspring the gifts

of our best genetic traits,

and tomorrow, we could give them the very best

of everything nature has to offer.

Our grandchildren could climb like geckos,

run like cheetahs...

[ Gunshot ]

...or see in infrared.

"Sex is part of nature.

I go along with nature."

that's what Marilyn Monroe said.

[ Chuckles ]

Sex may always be part of nature,

but only for recreation, not necessarily for procreation.

A world where babies are chemically crafted

and carefully reared in labs may sound utterly alien,

but parents will always do what's best for their children.

That aspect of our nature will never change.