Posted on 04/26/2017 8:39:52 PM PDT by heartwood
Inside what look like oversized ziplock bags strewn with tubes of blood and fluid, eight fetal lambs continued to develop — much like they would have inside their mothers. Over four weeks, their lungs and brains grew, they sprouted wool, opened their eyes, wriggled around, and learned to swallow, according to a new study that takes the first step toward an artificial womb. One day, this device could help to bring premature human babies to term outside the uterus — but right now, it has only been tested on sheep.
It’s appealing to imagine a world where artificial wombs grow babies, eliminating the health risk of pregnancy. But it’s important not to get ahead of the data, says Alan Flake, fetal surgeon at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and lead author of today’s study. “It’s complete science fiction to think that you can take an embryo and get it through the early developmental process and put it on our machine without the mother being the critical element there,” he says.
Instead, the point of developing an external womb — which his team calls the Biobag — is to give infants born months too early a more natural, uterus-like environment to continue developing in, Flake says.
(Excerpt) Read more at theverge.com ...
Excellent comments.
There are a number of conditions which would lead one to expect a preemie: severe preeclampsia/HELLP syndrome, premature labor that does not respond to tocolytics, ruptured membranes with infection, severe placental abruption. Perhaps cancer in the mother discovered mid-pregnancy. Maternal diabetes difficult to control, with complications like retinopathy.
Yes, this is going to open up a brave new world, full of practical and moral questions. Technology always does, and we usually don’t recognize the scope of the changes until after they’ve occurred. We are not good at not using technology, nuclear and chemical weapons being a notable exception to date.
Compared to some possibilities (AI, genetic engineering. life extension) artificial wombs seem not quite as momentous. Of course they can be combined with the above.
I don’t think the surgery would be more involved than a C-section. Take baby from mother, connect umbilical cord to machine. Some precision work there which might prolong the C-section.
One hope is that the artificial womb will present a safer and less stressful environment than the NICU, and reduce the incidence of neurological impairments.
I imagine they would play recordings of the mother's heartbeat and mimic her movements and the parents could still come in and talk to the baby so it could know their voices. There's still a complex interplay of hormones and sensory input that the baby won't have, but again, it seems preferable to an incubator and ventilator.
They are born all the time.
Back to the Soylent Green movie?
I think kids are bonding with machines much to early now. Imagine a machine giving birth. Will they be born with a phone in their ear? born with an implanted chip to control them better? Programmed to eat properly so the switch can be shut off when fattened enough to be reprocessed?
“Programmed to eat properly so the switch can be shut off when fattened enough to be reprocessed?”
No. They will just be processed when they reach the required weight.
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