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Lab Develops Artificial Womb
Meowharishi writes: "According to this article at the Observer, scientists from Cornell University have successfully developed the first artificial womb. Embroys successfully attached themselves to the walls of these wombs and began to grow but were terminated to comply with regulations. Developments like this really offer tremendous opportunities for creating a family for those who cannot have children the old fashioned way."
this is getting scary!
i am a cornell university student, and take pride in what this university does. by the way, i sure hope i make first post:)
I figured it was something to do with astroturf :-)
--
In need of some dARK Therapy?
...is thinking of the "Baby Harvesting" scene in the The Matrix right about now??
>>Developments like this really offer tremendous opportunities for creating a family for those who cannot have children the old fashioned way."
Actually, it offers tremendous opportunities for making you own army as well.
Getting a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach?
a step closer to having male pregnancy,,another Arnold movie predicts real life =p
be grown in a serigate pig than a vat of goo. At least I'd have a mommy
That's sick.
Developments like this really offer tremendous opportunities for creating a family for those who cannot have children the old fashioned way.
In other words, for those who can't have kids because they don't have a womb: men. In the context of gay "marriages". Gay men having kids of their "own". Very sick.
Why don't these researchers dedicate their energies to producing better contraceptives ?
We seem to live in a crazy world!
I can see the Sci-fi scenarios now: Saddam Hussein breeding an army of clones to conquer the world.
Talk about Pinky and the Brain.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
more children
As if a billion starving ones in developing countries wasn't enough, here's a way to make more!!!
Treating the childless?
Oh they mean childless rich white women who can afford IVF and MORE!
Why don't they try treating the starving children already born, those without clean water to drink or wash in, those orphaned by war, drought, famine, pestilence and death FIRST?
Why not? I'll tell you why not. Because it doesn't get them cushy specialist jobs "treating" childless rich white couples to the latest in shiny new status-symbols-- a baby -- that's why not.
Gee honey, shall we put it next to the home theatre center, or shall we leave it out in the garage with the SUV?
Can't you buy one at any adult toy store?
Thank you, thank you. I am here all the week.
--Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
This is actively working against evolution. I demand this stop immediately. Not only do we allow blind, deaf, ugly, and stupid people to pro-create, but now we're going to start allowing sterile people to procreate? Someday, we'll all end up stuck in the matrix feeding tubes, and it won't be imposed on us by some AI run amuck.... it will be done by our own choice.
For the record, I don't have anything against the aforementioned groups of people, I'm just saying that the proliferation of those traits in our gene pool is not necessarily desired. Not to be misconstrued - I firmly believe that we're all created equal, and should be given ample opportunities to pursue happiness in our own ways. I'll not persecute people based on how they were born, but do we necessarily want to become a people who can't function without the full dependence on technology?
Stephen Hawking claimed that ALS was the best thing that ever happened to his career, note that he didn't say that it was the best thing to ever happen to his life.
- passion
Is there something they're not telling us here? Is this making anyone else paranoid? If the human race is having serious problems with self-government and religion, what makes anyone believe we are going to get "better" playing God?
I have been thinking for a long time, that life actualy has no value whatsoever. This just confirms my hypothesis.
.mil-bots.
Rack up a few dozen of these artificial wombs, inject some in-vitro-fertilized eggs into each, and you got yourself a baby factory.
This effectively turns humans into objects.
Mass-produce them, China style, and a human will be a CHEAP object.
How long will it take until someone legalizes the destruction of these objects? Or human experiments? Or any of those other "special treatments" humans get when compared to other animals, plants or inanimate objects?
This could be the death of ethics. Just wait a few hundred years.
Next thing you know, we'll be getting our babies at the supermarket, right next to the onion rings and the potato chips.
This is SICK!
Can anyone say "Army of Clones"?
Put this together with cloning. Get some cells from Schwarzenegger or Stallone. Clone them to the hilt, raise them to be bloodthirsty
Invade a country of your choice. Repeat until world is conquered.
Now all we need is some accelerated growth hormones for humans like they use in cattle and some vegetables too.
If the foetuses were terminated after 6 days, it doesn't really show that the technique would scale up to full gestation.
From what I saw of the article, this has only been tested on human tissue. What's going on with the Scientific Method? Lab rats first, people second!
This isn't really what George Lucas needs right now either. "Attack of the Clones" coming out right when (possible) mass cloning of people is being developed...
This is exciting. Alduous is doing pretty good on his predictions. I'd be scared about the future, but I've just taken a gram of soma.
Pax Digitalia
The Pandora's box has been opened a long time ago. I see this as an exciting new potential. It may be unpopular now, but 50 years ago, who would have had laser surgery to fix their eye sight (if the technology was available) which sane person would get full reconstructive surgery from a birth defect? How about test-tube babies? All technologies have both good and bad potentials. I don't see these new technologies as anything to be afraid of. I trust humanity as a whole to do the right thing... we all havn't died off yet...
p r m t h s
"But terminated them to comply with regulations?"
I can see it now.
"You killed innocent (albeit embryonic) children!"
"How could you have ever let them mature?!"
These scientists may receive flak from all sides. Their "moral situation" was a catch-22.
Do you like German cars?
What is facinating about this is that it could either revolutionize the human birth process or be perverted into something horrid.
If Women were no longer subjected to being the bearer of children, and allowed to have the option of using an alternative method of gestating a child. Health costs could be lowered, OBs would be rare, etc. The Truth Machine and The First Immortal wree two books by James Halperin about ideas of how the future could turn out. He had artificial wombs as one of the techs (mentioned briefly).
At the same time, an artificial womb could be quite horrific. How would a person be after developing in an artificial womb. Charles Wilson explored this with Embryo and had a bunch of psychotic murderers running around.
I often felt that humans just shouldn't be allowed to do what they do with some forms of medical science because of how it is perverted in the name of their deity either. I'm sure the right-to-life people are going to have a field day with it, as well as the right-to-abortion folks. Both will show it as 'proof' that their side is right. Televangilists on TV will be telling folks to send em their money so they can stop it, etc.
Me, I find this facinating medically, but frightening socially.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
How is this different from a couple's child being gestated in a surrogate mother's womb?
How is this different from a different organ - the kidney - being replaced with external machinery (dialysis)?
How is this different from the prosthetic limbs or the artifical hearts in development?
Our bodies are imperfect and sometimes bits don't work properly or break. We have the means to workaround these shortcomings with technology; in this case, we still need parents to provide the genetic material and, obviously, raise the child once it is born.
---
Oregon
Is that every group that has even a hint of an agenda in this project will be jumping up and down, screaming and pushing their own agenda.
This project can do a *LOT* of good for couples that cant have children naturally but who dont want to have to involve a third party who could possibly become attached to the child after carrying it to full term.
Its a pity the feminists are already jumping up and down, advocating that the destruction of their gender will be assured if this project comes to fruition. I can also see the right-wing bible bashers coming out of the woodwork to stop 2 male parents from having a child together.
I really do hope that this kind of technology becomes available to the people that really need it. After all, it is a sad thing to not be able to have a child with the person you love.
Is it just me, or did this phrase seem to come straight from some dystopic science fiction novel. We regret to inform you that "you have been terminated to comply with regulations."
It makes you wonder what those oh-so pro-life legislators must have been thinking? "Hmmmm -- life is so sacred that we should order all extra-uterine embryos killed after 14 days."
Every time I hear about how our fine American politicians are "protecting" us from all this godless 21st century witchcraft, I wonder how long the rest of the world will consider us a "free" country.
At first a clone needed a human surrogate mother to carry the fetus to term. Now, we can clone the human and not even have a human carry it. This could be done behind closed doors. Nobody would even be aware that the child exists.
Combine that with genetic experiements, there are plenty of opportunities to play god and not get too concerned about the mistakes. Biology and medicine is more or less a game of trial and error, and genetics is unlikely to be much different. But if nobody knows about the 10,000 mutants that resulted from every success...
Something to think about anyways.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Yes there are downsides, like the aforementioned Brave New World scenario. It's inevitable that some people are going to take this extremely beneficial technology and and attempt to pervert it to serve some megamaniacal goal. It's my opinion, however, that the benefits far outnumber the drawbacks to this technology. Before dismissing this technology, think about species such as the thylacine, which were wiped out by people. Now imagine this technology able to restore those species, and give them a second chance at survival.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
first human cloning... now artifical wombs?
This is just a little too close to Huxley for me.
It's just a little disconcerting to imagine
making human beings with the parents being
almost totally disconnected with the creation
thereof. I'm a pretty liberal guy.. but this
is kinda creepy.
Developments like this really offer tremendous opportunities for creating a family for those who cannot have children the old fashioned way
Seems like there are enough kids who need loving so if you can't have them on you own why not adopt?In the book "The universe in a nutshell" by Stephen Hawking, he notes that humans developing inside an artificial womb would be able to develop larger brains. (of course, larger brains != more intelligence.. )
This device makes it possible for (baby|fetus)s to reach this "viability" mark much earlier...
I don't want to start a flame war, but what effect do you think technological advances such as these will have on ethics relating to unborn children/fetuses?
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
So this is how Lucas is going to promote Episode II.
'Some feminists even say artificial wombs mean men could eliminate women from the planet and still perpetuate our species.
Well, that would mean giving up sex too, and I guarantee that will never happen. Sex=Good
.cig - what you do after winning a good flame war
And who says all forms of female sterility are genetic? Some can be caused by disease/environment. And since an artificial womb demands selection of egg and sperm, why not just choose embryos that don't contain the genetic 'defect' if there is one.
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
Perhaps that tells you that the scientists are doing something they shouldn't be doing...?
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
Soon, we will be manufacturing babies. Buy five, get one free. Warranty void if baby got three eyes.
As if it weren't obvious, this has tremendous implications. But perhaps it's worth pointing one of them out.
Currently, abortion is legal until the fetus has reached a point of viability- that is, until it could conceivably live outside of its mother's womb on its own. Advances in medical science have been pushing that date back slowly since Roe v. Wade, but this is very big.
It's a pretty arbitrary line to begin with, and this makes it even farther from being grounded in modern science.
I'm not interested in having the yet another abortion debate, but I am curious how folks think this will change the rhetorical landscape for politicians, religous figures and ethicists. And, of course, for women.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
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As a father and a geek, this makes me sick. If your body does not have the ability to make children, you are not supposed to. Period. Stop this disgusting research. I'm all for a woman's freedom of choice, BUT scientists don't have the same rights over a life in a test tube that a woman does to the life in her body. SAY NO TO EMBRYO TESTING!
"The chief enemy of creativity is 'good taste'" -Pablo Picasso
Go to the Cornell University website. I have yet to find a reference to the "Centre for Reproductive Health and Infertility." Note the spelling, taken from the Guardian article referenced. A search for Womb on the website doesn't produce anything remotely talking about artificial wombs, either.
"What's so random about flipping a coin? Ever heard of the I Ching?"
Finally, some equality in technology! First they threatened to make men obsolete with synthetic sperm and cloning, now they can do it outside of a women. A few more decades and sex, not to mention most of the human race, will no longer be necessary! Yay...oh wait.
but were terminated to comply with regulations
...Kind of like Emeril's sitcom?
ok. that was really bad.
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
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I understand how frustrating it can be to not be able to have children... but when I see the good that adopting already born, yet abandoned children, I then realize that I can make a difference without having donated my own genetics
...they "modified" living females, greatly increasing the size of their wombs and turning them into mindless organic "factories" capable of producing anything from living tissue to chemical compounds.
You're using her as bait, Master!
The ugly is very appealing to man.... It's instinct. One shrinks from the ugly, yet wants to look at it. There's a devilish fascination in it. We extract pleasure from horror.
ATTRIBUTION: Sonya Levien (1895-1960), Russian screenwriter. William Dieterle. King Louis XI (Harry Davenport), The Hunchback of Notre Dame, commenting on the crowd's decision to crown the ugliest person as King of the Fair (1939).
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
'There are going to be real problems,' said organiser Dr Scott Gelfand, of Oklahoma State University. 'Some feminists even say artificial wombs mean men could eliminate women from the planet and still perpetuate our species. That's a bit alarmist. Nevertheless, this subject clearly raises strong feelings.'
For the record, how many guys do you know who come out saying 'Man, I'd love to have kids.. but its those damn _women_ I can't stand. Pussy? Who needs pussy! I just want a baby to cuddle!'
Sure, they don't like our PMS trips, but do they really want to eradicate sex (real sex) from their diets? I mean Rosy and her sisters, and the Realdoll only go so far...
These chicks make us normal feminists look bad.
Witty quotes suck.
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Please mod parent up.
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Usually relying on my cynicism and pessimism can answer any question more accurately than Nostradamus. But I plugged this equation into that horrid and abominable brain of my, and it just blew a fuse. Scary.
Let's see, the rabid feminists will somehow manage to simultaneously use this to their advantage while screaming about the horrors of it. Ditto right wing gun nuts, the hare krishnas, and the United Santa Claus Actors Union. Why oh why, did I ever pick this planet to land the flying saucer on?
The abortion implications alone are terrifying. The only logic that they've been able to use, is that even though it's alive, it's a parasite. Well, now that we don't have to kill it to remove it, doesn't that obligate the bioparents to pay for this?
Will the AI be this much closer to using us for batteries? If so, can I opt for the rich and powerful VR dream?
Will the neo-nazis finally be able to clone Hitler? If so, is this good or bad? Sure he's a monster, but we can finally kill him the right way this time.
And more importantly than anything, should I start buying stocks in tampon manufacturers, or do these things not go on the rag?
Quit trying to make people feel guilty for not being poor and not wanting to save the world. Save your self-righteous rants for someone who gives a crap.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
"Men redundant? Now we don't need women either"
I'm sorry, but while I can stand being considered 'redundant', I consider women to be absolutely necessary.
- - - - - - - -
Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
Can you imagine one of these things making an appearance in one of those ABC AfterSchool Special shows about teen pregnancy?
Holy shit, that would be so trippy.
PDHoss
======================================
Writers get in shape by pumping irony.
Yeah playing God is bad. So lets all quit taking any vitamins, no more pain killers, no more anti-biotics and lets shut down all hospitals. Because if man's hand is involved we're "playing God"
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
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Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these...
(just wanted to get it over with)
First: Personaly, if I were a woman, I would have a hard time deciding to have an abortion. But like all hard life decisions, it's one I wouldn't want the govornment to make it for me.
But the Supreme Court's ruling on abortions is completely based on the fact that the embryo affects the woman's body, and ignores her right of choice. What effect with this technology have if the courts find that this allows the embryo to be grown independant of the woman's body / health? (Especialy if the extraction is as invasive or less than the abortion). Women may be forced to incubate. Of course all families will still have the same right they always had to put the child up for adoption.
At first this appears to be a defeat for pro-choice. But look at the reasons most women want the abortion: health, too young, not ready for a child in their life. All of these are solved by adoption, and the health and pain aspect is elimiated.
Of course there is still the fact that a child of your's still exists in the world which would cause pro-choicers to continue their argument. "I don't want another child in a wold like this world." But realy this is about self-guilt. When these arguments are made, no one ever sugests stopping other peoples children from coming into the world. If anything the mother should have been more careful if this was her view (tube-tying is still available). Mistakes are made, but living with them is part of being human.
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
It tells us that the people legislating the limits on research are guided by outdated and unpopular paternalistic "morals" that only seek to restritct the behaviours of those they do not like.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Anyone who doubts the value of these uterine replicators need only read Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan series: he suffered terrible prenatal damage--but because of the availability of uterine replicators, the doctors were able to treat him enough that he survived (and then proceeded to change the world, but that's HIS story...)
This isn't just a way to not have to go through the inconveniences of pregnancy--it's a way to avoid the dangers. Even today, women can have a very hard time having children; occasionally, some complication occurs and the mother, the baby, or both die. This would eliminate the risk to the mother, and, once the technology is mature, the risk to the baby. It can also make it much easier to monitor the baby, detect any genetic or birth defects early, and maybe correct them; and, yes, it does help the mother to be freer. How many mothers out there would have LOVED this in about the seventh or eighth month?
I'm sure the technology isn't ready for mainstream yet. However, I'm equally sure (techie optimist that I am) that once it is, it will help us a LOT.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
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we were never told where the Borg came from in Voyager... maybe they originated on earth...! the Borg queen reminds me of a high school teach i had.
Thank you for letting us know that if we chose to strive for our own biological children instead of adopting the children of others that we are self-centered egotistical societal leaches. Thanks.
Has it ever occured to you that some people just aren't comfortable with adopting unknown children? You never know what you're going to get. The same could be said for biological children but it just doesn't "feel" the same. Studies should be done on the type of people who seem to have no problem just adopting any kid they happen across. My feeling is the research would show that those individuals are most certainly NOT normal people.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
What is being described is just the very, very, very early, most rudimentary stages of learning about embryos, and the uterus.
_ HELLP.html
One would think from the article, that "in the next few weeks, we'll be growing babies in an acquarium!"
Doctors and Scientists don't even understand some very basic problems in pregnancy in people during normal pregnancy.
Doctors have no real idea what causes HELLP/Pre-Eclampsia. See http://www.dartmouth.edu/~obgyn/mfm/PatientEd/PIH
or
http://www4.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/
search on HELLP
Not only that, they don't know how to stop it, or treat it with any real effectiveness. The only solution, is to hope that the baby is sufficiently developed that it will survive outside the uterus. Then they symptomatically treat the disease. (i.e. Treat blood-pressure, but can't figure out why it goes sky-high, and can't prevent this.) They keep the baby from having problems, and develop the lungs with steriods. The only solution to keep the mother and baby from dying (provided it's mature enough to live outside the uterus) is to deliver the baby.
I know this because I have several OBGYN family members, and my wife had a very serious case of HELLP. It's way serious...and science doesn't have a clue.
Thus, my skeptcism about this breakthrough. Sure, it's incredible science, and shows lots of hard work. But we're so far from actually doing what's proposed, it laughable. It's like giving a press release about your child who just learned to stand-up today, and claiming that they will be challenging Michael Johnson as a sprinter next week. Ha!
I wish them good luck, and kudo's. But just remember they have light-years left to go.
Finally, the whole process brings up a whole host of ethical issues. Lets say, they get it where they can keep embryos alive for many weeks. Do we know they are doing ok, or will they have missed some vital hormone sequence? Getting a baby alive to term is a big enough task, but will we have a normal baby?
What about the babies that reach some form of viability, but have extremely serious health problems. Do we euthanize them?
In short, we only have the faintest inkling of how things work. We haven't solved any of the ethical problems. We've got a lot of work to do before any of this could happen.
I normally end with "Cheers!" but the topic seems way too serious to be flip...
Brave New World, Here we come
Alerts
I'm so far from a luddite it's not funny, but are we sure we should be doing this? I mean most of us here are pretty firm believers in Darwinism, whether god started it or just luck (I believe luck, but I digress) - I mean if you medically can't have children, perhaps there's a reason? I know there's disease, accidents, and botched surgery that can cause these things, but I'm just uncomfortable with the idea.
I think we need to get away from the notion that every person out there has an automatic right to have children. Some people just shouldn't. Or how about adoption? There are a lot of kids out there in foster homes.
Top marks for the pure science involved tho!
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
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If your body does not have the ability to see, you are not supposed to. (So the blind stay blind)
If your body does not have the ability to hear, you are not supposed to. (So the deaf stay deaf)
If your body does not have the ability to walk, you are not supposed to. (So the paralyzed remain crippled)
If your body does not have the ability to produce its own insulin, you are not supposed to. (So diabetics will just die)
I could go on and on but you get the point. Just because you do not "like" it that does not make it "wrong".
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
But in this case, I did.
'Overpopulated' is one of these wonderful terms, that suggests a scientific problem. But really means 'there are some people I would rather weren't born.'
More specifically, 'overpopulaton' - whatever that is supposed to mean - is used as a euphamism for 'too many of them, about the right number of us.'
When we talk of overpopulation, what we are really saying is 'there are a class of people who should not be allowed to reproduce.' That is a dangerous and evil thought...
Feel free to tell me I'm wrong!
*r
--- My dad's political betting
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One of the more intelligent posts I've read on /. these last couple of days... whichever side you're on, this definitely makes YOU think. Quite rare in this age of 30 sec. attention spans.
Yes... and then evolutionary forces (like peanut butter or flights of stairs) apply their leverage and voila, evolution in action!
GPL Deconstructed
offtopic yes, but:
Should != used in a sentence be interpreted NOT THE SAME AS, or perhapse DOES NOT IMPLY, IS NOT LIKE? Perhapse we need more precise =='s
I'm not saying it's likely to happen, but it's an interesting (if somewhat creepy) thought.
--jrd
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Earlier, I said this doesn't raise any moral dilemmas - scratch that.
The abortion issue is a red herring - John & Jane (and Jill and Jacqueline) Mormon may get government sanction to adopt any aborted fetus they want in the state of Utah, by chucking them in one of these, but I doubt it.
However, I worry about extensive birth defects among babies birthed using this technique.
The evidence (search for string 'birth defects') is not as strong as I recall, but there is reason to believe that babies concieved by in vitro fertilisation - who are then transplanted into the womb of another woman - have higher birth-defect rates than other babies (this study was done in Australia, so maybe IFV agravates fetal alchohol syndrome.)
An artifical womb, which would, almost by definition, be a pretty imperfect copy the first time round, might have a hugely higher birth defect rate.
Be like me, enliven your sex life by discussing "flipper babies" instead of letting her go to sleep.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
A lot of people have brought up the issue of abortion and viability, suggesting that this sort of technology may have an effect on the ethics of aborting a fetus that may be considered viable at any stage.
However, there's another interesting consequence... What if a fetus could be transplated from a natural womb to an artificial one? Let's say a woman wants to have an abortion, and the doctor says, "We can either terminate the fetus, or we can transplant it to an artificial womb and put it up for adoption".
Would it ever be ethical to destroy the fetus in this case? This eliminates the argument of autonomy . Should a woman have the right to decide whether or not to destroy her fetus or simply put it up for adoption?
-- Will quantum computers run imaginary-time operating systems?
Christ on a crutch, this author *sucks*. Pick a plot and *go* with already, I can't keep track of this one.
--Dave Rickey
Haven't read it - is he referring to the restriction of going through the birth canal? Because millions of us never experienced it. Including Shakespeare's Macduff, who was "from his mother's womb / Untimely ripped" several hundred years ago.
Of course none of us yet look like the Guild members from Dune, so perhaps there is some potential there.
So how do you explain the female version of logical thought process? (:
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
Cos we all know what a shortage there is...
Buckets,
pompomtom
"There's an exception to every rule. Except for some rules"
There is something fishy with this story. Normal procedure would be to do this with animal studies first. I would wonder about the authenticity of the report.
Developments like this really offer tremendous opportunities for creating a family for those who cannot have children the old fashioned way."
Or for creating an army of genetically enhanced flying monkeys. Fly my pretties, fly! Hahahahahaha!
Think "Blade Runner" and "1984". This is the first step to creating humans to work and fight for the rest. This can be abused very easily. Think 50 years from now when a dictator raises an army of genetically engineered clones. They still have to raise the kids up to be adults but they can create a large army and/or workforce in 15 years time.
Human nature is such that this is a distinct possibility. The moral implications of the abuse of artifical births scares me.
Its about time my kids can get a womb with a view!
*rimshot*
I guess they can build a uterine wall with hormones and growth factors, but what about the constant flow of oxygen the organism needs? And what about the growing need for nutrients a growing fetus (foetus) requires?
And what of excersize and the other hormones (adrenelin, hypothalamic goo, etc) that all go into the Stew (Stu?) of Life? Do we really know the complete list of Ingredients a human baby needs, and can it be supplied in a lab?
For example, a dialysis machine is ~50 times bigger than a kidney and ~500 times less efficient & effective - now we want to artificially create all the other systems that make us up?
Wouldn't it be easier, on several levels, to start with, like, rodents or something, then work our way up?
sounds like the clones in huxley's 'brave new world'.
I Didn't Think It Was Possible. The "grim sci-fi future" is more gentle and humane than the present. Case in point: 7 of 9 is on a Borg cube and there is a drone in a maturation chamber. Despite heroic effort, she is unable to save it. The present: Regulations stipulate that human life be terminated, and scientists comply.
Yeah, I know there is no way we can stop this from happening... or do you mean to say "resistance is futile"?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I dont know how many other people noticed the quite dumb comment that some feminist made about how ment could eliminate women. This is quite stupid, why would men eliminate their means of sexual gratification. Do the feminists believe everyone would become homosexual?
I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class. Especially since I rule. -Randal, Clerks
So people who adopt are more selfless than those who do not? Adopted children cannot become status symbols? What about the celebrity parents who adopt 3, 4 or 5 kids and then bore the world by telling everyone over and over and over? Rosie O'Donnel, Mia Farrow...etc come to mind here.
Are you even TRYING to tell me that those who adopt children aren't trying to become "fullfilled"? You're daft if you actually believe that.
Lastly what the fuck is wrong with simply wanting to pass on your familial traits? Your family has existed for generations and all of a sudden it has to be the end of the line because you don't want to be seen as raising a "status symbol". Adopting children can be compared to buying children. So please don't try to make adoptive parents come across as "extraordinary" because they are anything but that.
I know this is Slashdot, and I know everyone here is supposed to be the cream of the crop when it comes to snobbery and elitism, but this Adoption over Fertility Treatment attitude really takes the fucking cake. You sir have raised the bar for all of us, and for that I thank you!
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Could this be used instead of an incubator for premature babies?
A birth too soon is a recurring nightmare for any pregnant mother, and if this invention could save children just a few days earlier, it would save thousands of lives.
The trick is reattaching the umbilical line back to some sort of external, artificial system for oxygen and nutrition. The umbilical arteries shouldn't have collapsed by that point, so perhaps something could be done.
Good luck to the researchers. It would be a dream some true...
-twb
Adoption? Why do people completely disregard adoption as an alternative?
It seems kind of odd to me (comming from a western culture) that this kind of technology came to be. Most people would rather have something to stop the sexual side effect called children rather than create more in labs.
> Embroys successfully attached themselves
> to the walls of these wombs and began to
> grow but were terminated to comply with regulations.
That's nice, but any chance of doing the same with embryos?
RMN
~~~
"I shall begin at the beginning," said the D.H.C. and the more zealous
students recorded his intention in their notebooks: Begin at the
beginning. "These," he waved his hand, "are the incubators." And opening
an insulated door he showed them racks upon racks of numbered test-tubes.
"The week's supply of ova. Kept," he explained, "at blood heat; whereas
the male gametes," and here he opened another door, "they have to be kept
at thirty-five instead of thirty-seven. Full blood heat sterilizes." Rams
wrapped in theremogene beget no lambs.
Still leaning against the incubators he gave them, while the pencils
scurried illegibly across the pages, a brief description of the modern
fertilizing process; spoke first, of course, of its surgical
introduction-"the operation undergone voluntarily for the good of Society,
not to mention the fact that it carries a bonus amounting to six months'
salary"; continued with some account of the technique for preserving the
excised ovary alive and actively developing; passed on to a consideration
of optimum temperature, salinity, viscosity; referred to the liquor in
which the detached and ripened eggs were kept; and, leading his charges to
the work tables, actually showed them how this liquor was drawn off from
the test-tubes; how it was let out drop by drop onto the specially warmed
slides of the microscopes; how the eggs which it contained were inspected
for abnormalities, counted and transferred to a porous receptacle; how
(and he now took them to watch the operation) this receptacle was immersed
in a warm bouillon containing free-swimming spermatozoa-at a minimum
concentration of one hundred thousand per cubic centimetre, he insisted;
and how, after ten minutes, the container was lifted out of the liquor and
its contents re-examined; how, if any of the eggs remained unfertilized,
it was again immersed, and, if necessary, yet again; how the fertilized
ova went back to the incubators; where the Alphas and Betas remained until
definitely bottled; while the Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons were brought out
again, after only thirty-six hours, to undergo Bokanovsky's Process.
"Bokanovsky's Process," repeated the Director, and the students underlined
the words in their little notebooks.
One egg, one embryo, one adult-normality. But a bokanovskified egg will
bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and
every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into
a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one
grew before. Progress.
"Essentially," the D.H.C. concluded, "bokanovskification consists of a
series of arrests of development. We check the normal growth and,
paradoxically enough, the egg responds by budding."
Responds by budding. The pencils were busy.
He pointed. On a very slowly moving band a rack-full of test-tubes was
entering a large metal box, another, rack-full was emerging. Machinery
faintly purred. It took eight minutes for the tubes to go through, he told
them. Eight minutes of hard X-rays being about as much as an egg can
stand. A few died; of the rest, the least susceptible divided into two;
most put out four buds; some eight; all were returned to the incubators,
where the buds began to develop; then, after two days, were suddenly
chilled, chilled and checked. Two, four, eight, the buds in their turn
budded; and having budded were dosed almost to death with alcohol;
consequently burgeoned again and having budded-bud out of bud out of
bud-were thereafter-further arrest being generally fatal-left to develop
in peace. By which time the original egg was in a fair way to becoming
anything from eight to ninety-six embryos- a prodigious improvement, you
will agree, on nature. Identical twins-but not in piddling twos and threes
as in the old viviparous days, when an egg would sometimes accidentally
divide; actually by dozens, by scores at a time.
"Scores," the Director repeated and flung out his arms, as though he were
distributing largesse. "Scores."
But one of the students was fool enough to ask where the advantage lay.
"My good boy!" The Director wheeled sharply round on him. "Can't you see?
Can't you see?" He raised a hand; his expression was solemn. "Bokanovsky's
Process is one of the major instruments of social stability!"
Major instruments of social stability.
Standard men and women; in uniform batches. The whole of a small factory
staffed with the products of a single bokanovskified egg.
"Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines!" The
voice was almost tremulous with enthusiasm. "You really know where you
are. For the first time in history." He quoted the planetary motto.
"Community, Identity, Stability." Grand words. "If we could bokanovskify
indefinitely the whole problem would be solved."
Solved by standard Gammas, unvarying Deltas, uniform Epsilons. Millions of
identical twins. The principle of mass production at last applied to
biology.
As one of few pro-life anarchists out there I would like people's opinion on this.
forgive my website trilucid.com flaked out and I lost most of my pages
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
This would truly be a gift to mankind if it matured (even if the article is fake the science will happen eventually).
But alas, name one gift of mankind that has not been used for greed?
I think if this technology happened, a lot of women would opt to have a baby outside their womb so as to not be bogged down for nine months. After a certain amount of time of this acceptance, there would be a push for genetic purification...elimate all the genetic defects...then you'd have regulations...only certain babies allowed to live in order to have optimized countries. I'm glad I'll be dead before this matures.
Tonight I shall sleep beneath a blanket of paranoia.
I wasn't worried about being cloned without my permission. I knew that no woman (other than dear ol' Mom) would want to carry a copy of me arond for 9 months. However, this changes everything.
A couple of things..
1)I wonder if a live fetus was miscarried, could it be placed into the artificial womb till birth.
2)This will be the end of that "re-birthing" craze. What re-birthing will renew my life? Well, sorry but I wasn't born that way. I was born by cracking my "shell". Which brings up...
3)You can't call this being born. You have to call it being hatched.
"Developments like this really offer tremendous opportunities for creating a family for those who cannot have children the old fashioned way." Such as computer nerds and star trek fans who are unable to interact socially and thus obtain dates with the femalese.cx
A fetus needs much more than just a substrate to attach to... think "antibodies" and "gas exchange" and "nutrients"...
Given how often miscarriages happen IRL, there's no chance of a fetus surviving in a lab.
Sorry to burst your post-apocalyptic bubble, but we're a long way off from baby-farms.
survival of the fittest, I think it is about time that continues this evolution, or we won't be here long (10000 years, tops). What will our future generations do when there is no oil 300 years from now, and we haven't evoloved? Too many people are looking at the extremely short term (5-20 years), and not to what happens 500 to 1000 years.
What kind of psychological impact will it have if a baby is brought to term without any of the rocking, singing, ooh-ah, coo-coo, dinner, conversation, love and life of the mother in close contact? An "artificial womb" will presumably be a dark, enclosed tank with little or no human contact. There is substantial evidence to indicate that prenatal stimulation is important. I wonder what kind of messed up people will come out of these chambers.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
This is no big deal. Take a soma and relax!
My kids (twins) were born 8 weeks prem, my wife just got too sick (toximia) for her to continue, her life and therefore the kids was endangered. With this tech the kids could have been transplanted and gone to term rather than having the stress of having to breath, eat etc before they were realy ready.
That said we were realy lucky and from about 12 months there were within normal size and normal or above for other development. Even so I'd have given alot not to have had to go through that experiance.
In the future, people with more money (rich bastards) will simple implant their fertilized eggs in a man-made womb and not have to ruin their movie-star bodies having a kid.
:)
Kinda Sketchy if you ask me....
Mike
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
Well, I'm kind mixed about this whole thing... but I find it interesting that uterine replicator that's central to many of Lois McMaster Bujold's books MIGHT actually become a reality
Of course if we had a Beowulf cluster of these, hmm...
sic transit gloria mundi
realdoll.com? :)
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
Where is the discussion about embedded linux for the womb? It only has to run for 9 months! The new multitasker kernel could support twins! What about a 10,000-unit womb farm ( goo-goo.com)?
While this sounds fascinating and interesting from a point of view of pure intellectual pursuit, I don't see the practical uses for this technology. Those that are sterile have already established options ranging from the long existing adoption, cloning (though this only passes on one parents genes, and since the DNA used is the older/shorter DNA of an adult, it's probably irresponsible to create a person who'll end up with arthritis or worse before they can drive), and if they're sterile because the embryo can't cling to the walls of the uteris (right organ?) there are women out there more than willing to act as a surrogate.
After my initial reaction of "this is neat", my next thought is rembering Brave New World where "mother" became a dirty word because everyone was grown in jars rather than in people. Which makes me worry that something like this may only serve to demystify the miracle of life further than the world culture already has, and make us further capable of thinking of people as products and not the complicated emotional intellectual creatures we are.
This just raises the ever-present concern: "Now that we can, should we?"
where'd my typewriter go?
So lets sum up what humans can do so far.
1. We can manipulate DNA
2. We can create clones
3. Those clones no longer need wombs
Am I the only one that envisions super-soldiers? Seriously, the possiblity of creating a race of super-people didn't seem feasable, that is until someone finally developed a way to cut out the middle man (women).
Maybe I'm just paranoid, but technology like this should be kept under very VERY close guard. Imagine a dictator like Hussein getting his hands on something like that...
Just a thought.
The Raven.
The Raven
And when AI takes us over like in The Matrix, they can extend this technology to grow us!!!
(kidding tags added for mods without any sense of humor...you know who you are...I am not a troll!)
Richard M. Stallman is appalled at the new invention, as it violates our rights to procreate freely. There is a free (as in speech, not as in beer) alternative in the works, known as GNU/Womb. More details on the way...
/. geek. Now they can use their ever-proven masturbation techniques to have children.
Just think, now every square geek on slashdot has the chance to procreate. Before you actually had to "have sex." Ha! Fat chance of that happening to the average
The emotional bond that seems to exist between the mother and child within the womb seems irreplacable. It's proven fact that stimulation is what help babies develop, and it seems like a test-tube baby would lack many of the sensations available to a naturally born baby (the sounds of the mother's voice, jostling, temperature and hormonal variations).
As I posted earlier, I think this sort of thing could make us "God children" (see G.A.T.T.A.C.A.) become inferior as superior, disease and disability-free children are born from laboratories.
*sigh* Perhaps I'm just overreacting.
Has anyone forgotten about adopting? Families that can't have kids should adopt; there are a LOT of kids out there who need a good home!!
AFAIK we still don't use most of our brains, so what's the point in having a 100 GB disk if you are using only 1 GB of your existing 10 GB disk?
boky
quote: Developments like this really offer tremendous opportunities for creating a family for those who cannot have children the old fashioned way.
So now we're trying to beat evolution? So soon after we all laughed at that American schoolboard for deciding to not teach the theory of evolution? Wake up people, if someone cannot have children, then that is our precious evolution in progress.
Now let me try and sort this out: we all believe in evolution, yet we're trying to best it now? First people deny God's existence, and then they try to duplicate the work that that entity was purported to have done... I think science should have a view, and then not fuck with it.
And the overpopulation post was not flamebait as some people have decided. However, it's not really overpopulation in the developed world (who would be able to afford this type of technology, if it were developed into maturity), it's the ageing population. So in some twisted sense, this "womb" might be to our advantages: if biologists stop working on finding cures for diseases inflicting the elderly, and instead focus on creating new life, then at least life expectancy stays low.
I imagine that if human civilization ever came to accept this type of technology, it would be possible to one day use it to colonize far away solar systems. Instead of massive self-sustaining 'generation' ships, we could send unmanned robotic prospecting missions out to look for life-sustaining planets. If the ship found a promising new home, it would drop landing vehicles and build temporary shelters. Food plants could then be grown indoors from seeds transported in cold storage, and the planetary atmosphere tested further. If everything checked out, the ship could then start to give birth to and raise a "crew" from a cold-store of embryos.
The crew would grow up and be taught how to build more complicated structures and machinery; one day they would move out of the temporary shelters and onto the land itself. They would have access to an archive of our culture and knowledge to guide them as they adapted to the land and built a new culture from available resources. Maybe one day they would decide to 'phone home...', and we would meet aliens from space... ourselves!
Obviously, I am talking science fiction here; anyone who has seen a 2-year-old on a rampage realizes that it would require insane artificial-parent technology to bring about a new genesis of humanity on a far away planet, (I don't think the talking Barney and a VCR would cut it), but I do think that advances like the artificial womb are exciting, and bring all of this speculation closer to the realm of the possible.
The legendary axlotl "tanks" were actually created using the female Bene Tleilaxu. Anyone with the strength of will to read all of the Dune novels learns of this.
nt
(of course, larger brains != more intelligence..)
So how do you explain the female version of logical thought process? (:
This joke seems to assume that since human females in general have slightly smaller brains than males, then females are thus less intelligent than males. How unfortunate to have such a thought, because in this society women will have more control over what happens to their pregnancy then they do. It is not a good idea to imply that they cannot make logical decisions that will benefit their welfare.
Perhaps the women you have met in your life seem to be less logical than the men. That is indeed unfortunate-it may have subconsciously painted a negative picture of female intelligence in your mind. By the way, it is also illogical to assume that just because a small group of individuals have certain characteristics, then that entire group has those characteristics.
The relevance, again, is that this will primarily affect womens' decisions about their pregnancies. So think again before joking that women are less logical than men-their decisions are society's future.
Not to be a troll, but is this not screwing with evolution? I know some people really really want children, but if they're not able to reproduce they should consider adopting instead of bringing another little mutant into the world.
I'd be curious to know about the person who wrote this article as there were many horrible spelling errors!
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
When we talk of overpopulation, what we are really saying is 'there are a class of people who should not be allowed to reproduce.' That is a dangerous and evil thought...
True. Some people think that population control means killing, if not sterilizing large amounts of people accordingly deemed unfit to reproduce. Or, failing that, strict fecundity restrictions a la China.
Most people who don't already have a genocidal streak inside them think more in terms of improved contraception and an increased standard of living [which need not be as profligate as that of your typical U.S. resident] as the ticket to a lower birth rate.
Happy, well-fed people with lives worth living tend to find it less of a priority to create new ones. That's what has been happening in almost every industrialized Western country in the past few decades, and is not happening in areas of greater human need.
Now, how to make this happen is another can of worms entirely---but most sane people concerned about overpopulation rightfully see authoritarian measures as a giant leap backward.
iSKUNK!
This could lead to life-saving medical procedures once further research is in. Imagine uses for this 'womb' where fetus' are not grown but instead it is used to grow organs for transplantation. A few of your own cells can be used for the procedure giving you an organ that is genetically identical and therefore will not be rejected by your body.
Shh.
The caps in my nick actually came about as a parody of those AOL lamers, around the time when AOL was just starting up. It's not quite as funny anymore since so many choads seriously have nicks like that, but at least I haven't gone and changed it because of what anonymous cowards might say about it.
I'm not nessessarily clear on where you're drawing the line between technology and not-technology...
This lack of distinction, of course, makes it difficult to evaluate your argument.
Chimps use sticks to extract bugs from logs and mounds--an evolutionary advantage derived from technology.
...in a similar fashion, it is hard to see human tech use as extra-evolutionary; evolution has pointed us towards opposable thumbs and big brains, which in turn have encuraged a wide variety of tech invention/use.
At it's base, evolutionary pressures are about keeping the DNA moving--and, it could be argued, artifical wombs do that to a T.
If your agrument is that you are concerned by the prospect of a human society intermeshed with technology, that's another issue.
---------------
"do we necessarily want to become a people who can't function without the full dependence on technology?"
---------------
I belive we're already there mate.
Again, I'm not clear on what you mean by "technology", but let's be (obscenely) generous, and say technology means industrial/post-industrial.
Now, take our current world, and remove any technology invented after 1700 (again, being generous)...
...I don't think many people are going to be left once all the dust settles.
+1 insightful
;-)
Sorry, I'm not a moderator today or else I'd give you those points for real.
I posted to
Now we need to:
1) Kill all the women and harvest their eggs.
2) Build a shitload of these artificial wombs.
3) Spend money previously allocated to women on hardware instead.
4) Develop 'artificial pussy' to have sex with.
I am certinly not an eloquent slashdotter, but let me bend your ear(eye?) for a minute or two.
I smoke. I know that I will grow a nasty case of lumps on and in my lungs if I don't stop. (bare with me here.) I deserve to get what ever comes my way, but look at the development science like this.
I pay for insurance on my car in case I'm in a wreck. I warehouse keeps parts to replace my fenders. Time goes by, and I run over a couple of MS employees one day. Damage done, Insurance pays, warehouse ships parts, car gets fixed.
So back to my point. I smoke, I get lung cancer, Insurance pays, warehouse ships, body gets fixed.
(NOTE: I'm kidding about the selfish smoking thing) Really, Think about the kid that is born with a heart problem. Or the cop that gets shot in the line of duty and looses his lung(s). That is the real reason for this stuff. Not so that we can breed humans, but so that we can "manufacture" factory replacement parts. Besides everyone knows that the cheep after market parts never fit quite right.
(BTW: I'm all in favor of natural selection, but the point I'm trying to make here is that this isn't so that we can populate the earth)
So, whether this technology overturns Roe vs. Wade or not (and quite frankly, Roe vs. Wade was a horrible butchery of justice, flagrantly beyond the scope of the constitution), the effect on the social landscape will be minimal.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
It should be apparent to you that humans no longer live according to the natural laws. We've evolved past living in the bodies we were born in, past living in the environment we were born in. I would suppose that we aren't even animals any more.
A lot of this type of thing makes you question what existence is, what consciousness is, and what your are. Are you your body? When you get an organ transplant do you become partially another person? What about receiving and donating blood even? Is there some kind of spirit that separates you from the not-you?
Does it become such of a problem if a person is blind if she can be given sight again? That sight would probably be better that any sight you or I could ever imagine. What if deaf people can be given their hearing back? Heck, ugly people can already become sexy.
Now, most people tell me that I simply watch too much anime, but one day I hope that the body can become irrelevant. I'm quite disgusted with the body I was given, and I'm excited at how many options are available for making it much more comfortable to live in.
From time to time I think that it would be a good idea to impose some kind of restriction on procreation. In most species of animals, not every member of the species may procreate. Maybe given a "purer" gene pool, I wouldn't be in the mess I'm in, but it's debateable whether my mess is related to genetics at all.
The problem I always run into when trying various thought experiments where procreation is only limited to the select is what the criteria should be. Perhaps we should have a yearly near-deathmatch among males who wish to procreate in order to weed the weaklings out. The survivors could choose from among females that want to procreate on the basis of whom they think will be wildest in bed. That's a close approximation to how it's done in the animal kingdom, but it raises the question of whether the resulting traits would be a good direction for the species. You'd probably end up with a bunch of bimbos and jocks. Another situation would be a large fine for the privelege of marriage and therefore procreation, payable by each mate, maybe somewhere in the neighborhood of $500,000. It has several advantages, but do you really think that you want a world of Bill Gateses? Intelligence isn't enough to be successful; there's also a requirement of being underhanded and sometimes downright evil. I've also explored a few other interested situations, but I always come to the same conclusion: there's no good way of defining quality.Additionally, evolution is a process, not a goal. The fallacy of those situations is the assumption that there's a knoweable outcome we can solve for. That just isn't true.
Is it that much of a problem that humans can modify their own bodies? I think that's a step in evolution, itself. Let's face it: you can't tell people to not reproduce. Humans have no instinctual pecking order that prevents all but the fittest from mating. The evolution now is being able to control our own bodies.
Join the Slashcott! Stay away entirely Feb 10 thru Feb 17! Close all tabs to prevent autorefresh!
This is likely to be an expensive operation (a more complex surgery than a standard abortion procedure, which as stated above, leaves little more than a bloody pulp, plus an expensive piece of equipment). Who would pay for it? Furthermore, if ALL the unwanted pregnancies were put up for adoption, who would adopt them all?
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
heh yeah just try pushing contraceptives in india Such a thing could spell the end to your political career or even your own death.
BTW you should really read more about the subject before you start bitching at scientists. They may be able to produce cheaper and more effective contraceptives but it takes the will of the people to use them.
In africa women will sometimes use coke to kill off sperm in the vigina. mmm "enjoy"
That is probably the most interesting comment to have EVER been posted on Slashdot. Too bad it was wasted on a bunch of 13 year old trolls that didn't even notice it.
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
Great, all we need now is the Bokanovsky's Process and we have reached the Brave New World. Exactly why are they doing this?
"A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.
The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north. Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory. Wintriness responded to wintriness. The overalls of the workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. The light was frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and living substance, lying along the polished tubes like butter, streak after luscious streak in long recession down the work tables.
"And this," said the Director opening the door, "is the Fertilizing Room."[...]
"Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines!" The voice was almost tremulous with enthusiasm. "You really know where you are. For the first time in history." He quoted the planetary motto. "Community, Identity, Stability." Grand words. "If we could bokanovskify indefinitely the whole problem would be solved."
Solved by standard Gammas, unvarying Deltas, uniform Epsilons. Millions of identical twins. The principle of mass production at last applied to biology.
for more: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
* * Always question "the National Interest" - 9 times out of 10 it is a cover for evil
How much does it suck to have your career terminated or suspended due to pregnancy? Now parents can take an equal part in the *creation* and raising of their kids. I don't want to risk my health carrying a child, and I'm sick of women not being taken seriously in their jobs because it's assumed that they'll get knocked up, require matenity leave, and most likely terminate their employment? In this situation, either party can take the time off and care for the children, or split it between them, because it will be a non-issue until the child is actually born.
:)
This is also a necessary step in a world where men can become parents in seconds (and indeed that sometimes is the limit of their involvement). Women can choose to be sterilized, assume full reproductive control, and when they choose to have a child, choose when and in what situation it is concieved.
It could be misused, but so can most technological advances. I like to think of this device ending gender disparity. I don't think vomiting, varicose veins and stretch marks are a necessary condition for femininity
-- INTX Grouch. http://www.midnightblue.net
"Developments like this really offer tremendous opportunities for creating a family for those who cannot have children the old fashioned way."
I'm of the opinion that if you can't have children "the old fashioned way", there's something actually physically wrong with either parent, or both. How would this affect their children's ability to reproduce themselves? Could this technology be "self-perpetuating" in a way?
There are fields stretching as far as the eye can see, where Humans are no longer born... We are grown.
-Morpheus, The Matrix
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
I think it's all good and wonderful that they're making progress but this is disgusting- "the embryos were terminated to comply with regulations"? They're talking about murder! It's not even like they can come up with one of the abortion defenses that women come up with-- they created these people with intent! And they murdered them with the same! We are not guinea pigs and I think these people should be tried before the courts and hanged for their crimes against humanity.
Lesbian couples can have childres from sperm banks, this would gay male couples to use perhaps donated eggs to have children of their own.
She breathed a short laugh. "For all that I try to be all modern and galactic, that feels so strange. All sorts of men don't make it home for the births of their children. But My mother was out of town on the day I was born, so she missed it, just seems . . . seems like a more profound complaint, somehow."
-- Diplomatic Immunity , Lois McMaster Bujold, chapter 1,
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Thank you, that is all.
On the one side, childless couples could have their own children - they wouldn't have to adopt, but that little bit of happiness doesn't even begin to compare with all of the problems and social dilemas that I've come up with in just under 2 minutes...
I'm not normally one who has a problem with contraception or abortion - I believe that those kinds of decisions should be left up to the couple... But this latest development, really does give me pause, no, it truly scares the hell out of me.
Why? Well let's run through just a few totally plausible scenarios:
1) People who can't have kids now, will be able to have them. Isn't there something to be said for fucking with natural selection? Maybe, just MAYBE, there's a really good reason why they can't have kids. Like, they ought not to...
2) Part of having children is the pregnancy EXPERIENCE. No, I'm not female, but I have several close friends that have had children and I can tell you that I've lived the pregnancy thing with them. It's both joyous and hellish at the same time - but NONE of them would trade it for anything. Just try and convince them, or me, or anyone that visiting their "cutie pie" in Tank 64F, Row 12, Floor 19 is the same...
3) Implanting the artifical womb into a female for carrying to term: Who says it has to go into the mother? What if they implant it into a surrogate? What in the hell happens then? "Normal" surrogate mother relations are already tricky - what does this do to the body of law (no pun intended) related to surrogates when the womb and fetus belong to another woman, but someone carrys it for them?
Still yet, what if the woman who donated the eggs and cells decides NOT to have the whole mess implanted into herself? Can the husband then force her to? Can the husband elect to have a surrogate carry to term (and then see above)?
4) Abortion - right now, I totally support the right of the couple/woman to terminate the pregnancy for whatever reason they may have - because the woman has to carry the kid to term and deal with the whole thing. BUT, what if the kid is in a tank? Can the parents then decide to pull the plug? At what point can they pull the plug? Under what circumstances? What if they're not allowed to or it's after the deadline (again, no pun intended)? Can they be forced to pay for the development/care of a child they now no longer want? They could easily rely on the argument that the child might not have come to term in the mother's womb, so they ought not to be responsible... On the flipside, the government could rely on the argument that the fetus might have come to term...
What if they're allowed to disavow themselves of the developing fetus? Upon "birth" is it then a ward of the state? Does that mean that I, as a taxpayer, have to help to raise this thing that I never wanted? Just what goes on the birth certificate?
5) Will 'tank' children be treated differently? What happens when it's discovered by their peers or employers? What type of discrimination will they be subject to? What rights will have to be expanded to include them?
6) Genetic defects: Right now, the mother's body senses when the fetus isn't viable and effectively terminates the pregnancy. We still don't know why this happens or how it works (or we'd have solved the whole 'miscarriage' problem). So, who's to say that the machine pumping in nutrients and removing waste products is going to shut down when the same set of circumstances occurs? Just what does one need to do when the fetus is deformed or genetically defective?
7) The whole argument of "boy or girl" is out the window... Well, actually it's probably visible thru the window but I digress...
8) Breeding farms: Cloning and base pair anonomolies aside - isn't anyone else scared shitless by the fact that some terrorist organization would gain access to this technology? All they'd have to do to breed more terrorists is to scrape a few cells off of their nut of the week (no pun intended).
9) How long do they stay in the tank? Why just a normal 9 months? Why not longer? Why not add a few sub-dermal microphones and distortion-adjusted videoscreens and just leave the kid in the tank for a few years? Force feed the brain with advanced calculus, etc, and then when the kid is removed teach it to walk, etc... Admittedly, this is totally off the wall, but hey - look at the topic...
10) Like the article said - the whole employer/HMO thing. HMO's could have the "Aetna Fetus Farm" and refuse to pay for C-sections, or vaginal births because they cost too much, risk is too high, amount of tests/etc is too high, etc... If I was Aetna, I'd be cummin in my pants with glee! The only problem I forsee is that you'd need to have serious amounts of redundant power/other utilities coming into the place, and you couldn't run M$ products (by their own admission in their own licenses, they're not fit for life-critical functions). Mothers wouldn't be able to take off of work... How would this affect the US Family Medical Leave Act?
11) A new terrorist or criminal target? Hell, babies get stolen all the time out of hospitals - how about "out of the tank"... What about taking the whole tank? What about switching the ID tags on the tank (now the VonBlumons get the Johnson baby...)? What about hacking in and scrambling the ID database until you're paid $200 million?
12) Terrorist attacks on the nutrient solution manufacturers? Stealing trucks of nutrients? Attacking the companies that manufacture the equipment that maintains the tanks? What about the tank manufacturer?
13) Viruses? How do you screen the employees against viruses? If one of them is taking the train in to work and catches a cold or the flu, the whole farm could be in serious jeopardy... I suppose the only solution would be to quarantine the whole facility and keep the staff on-site... Which means they'd be away from their families - unless, a cell or two was stolen from the odd tank here and there (with the consent of the parents of course!) to create a worker for the facility. The worker would be told that the facility was their family... They could be bred for high-resistance to disease... yeah that's it...
14) Tornados, earthquakes, floods, storms, etc... Ummm, this thing has to go in a seismically stable area, and be seriously protected lest there be lawsuits... Guess it's going to be dug into the side of a mountain vis a vis NORAD... Which means, that no one is getting in to see the actual kid until it's ready for pick up... I suppose you could watch by webcam over the Net, but that's not the same... Even if the connection is SSL, someone could infer that you've got one cooking in the tank and use it for blackmail...
15) Where does this end? Why not just combine this with a bit of genetic engineering and breed what we need? Soldiers, golf pros, garbage collectors, maids, executives, porn stars with REAL tits, etc... How do you determine what someone's going to be? Rely on the parent's to fill out a web form?
I say the best thing to do in this case is to shut down the lab, burn the research, and deal with the scientists effectively...
FWIW, That's my $0.50 on this whole thing...
Yo. Lighten up.
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
This is sick. Creating human life just to see if it will attach to an artifical womb? What have we become?
How about some Bioethics 101
Rule 0: Human life is sacred.
Rule 1: A human's life shall not be taken.
Rule 2: A human shall give consent to all expirementing done on them. This concent may not be given until they are of age(around 18).
Rule 3: Whenever possible expirements should be carried out on other organisms to minimize human suffering.
Rule 4: Research shall be carried out in a contained enviornment. Only when a new organism/product/medicne's side effects have been thouroughly tested shall it be released into "the wild"
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
There are only two groups of people who will be bothered by this -
a) Those who complain and worry about every scientific advance that is made e.g. we won`t be able to breath if our automobile travels at over 30 miles per hour - it`s the end of the world as we know it !
b) That rather repulsive group of females who at every opportunity recite the phrase "Men are redundant !".
My wife won't get pregnant no matter how much anal sex we have.
That's the "traditional way", right?
AntiChristX
Daring to remain below 5 karma indefinitely
What's up over there in the States? Is it rendered illegal to adopt a poor child from your local community or even a poor foreign country? Or is it unpopular now, because that cute little kiddie might have terrorist genes because it came from Somalia?
I don't get this planet anymore. Millions of kids die of treatable diseases and undernourishment every year, but billions are spent every year to produce breeding technology for those who are biologically disabled from offspring production.
Beam me up Scotty. There ain't no intelligent life down here.
+++ath0
If they were to combine such technology with a Realdoll!
She doesn't cook, she doesn't clean, but she will bear your children!
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
What the fsck is all this "I'm so scared about this"
crap anyway? This could be just about the
crowning acheivement of our species, and all
I can hear is WHINE WHINE WHINE.
Have any of you actually SEEN a birth? I have -
including caesarian. IT'S HORRIFYING.
The fact is that our evolution of HUGE HEADS has
pushed right up against what can be squeezed
through a human pelvis. How many MILLIONS of
women have died in childbirth? Can you imagine
the total amount of SUFFERING that has been
undergone, just to keep our species going?
What the fsck do you think technology SHOULD
be helping us do, anyway, play more realistic
GAMES or something?
Get your heads out of your asses and you might
realize that this is a truly heroic effort
to free ourselves from a blind and monstrous
nature - red in tooth, claw and vagina!!!
Pathetic. Fucking pathetic. What would it take for you morons to see a troll, a fucking public service announcemnet?
Take an artificial womb and some frozen sperm, then send them on a journey to a nice looking planet.
I will write this (strictly for the purposes of discussion) from the perspective of a moral agnostic, in that I won't even take into consideration things that some/most people would perceive as evil or morally repugnant. Strictly scientifically speaking:
The creation of an artificial womb would give geneticists a MUCH more powerful tool for study. They would be able (although not under current US law) to perform genetic experiments on embryos and observe them developing into fetuses. The science of gene therapy would be furthered immensely. We could theoretically cure genetic blindness, deafness, ugliness, stupidity, and sterility. We could create evolution. The Apotheosis of Man. A humanist's dream come true.
Also, don't forget that people with genetic disabilities are often sensitive about their condition. Given people's natural feelings toward their offspring (naturally developed or otherwise), I find it hard to believe that many people with genetic disorders would want their children to grow up with the same pain as they did themselves.
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
Argh, alot of these people posting keep saying that artificial womb is this and that.. but did you even read the whole thing?... its made out of the woman's cells then PUT BACK IN.. its not some sack in a lab lol...
Essentialy we're in the same kind of situation. A tiger uses it's teeth to kill and stripes to hide. These special characteristics help the tiger survive and breed. Our special characteristic is our brain. As I see it: Anything our brain helps us with is natural. Even if it means we'd become wheelchair sitting, websurfing, tubefed weaklings who'd die in an power outage. Shit happens! The dinosaurs died... Maybe because they became to specialised? The same could happen to us. The univers wouldn't care less.. :) .. So enjoy your life as it is.
Cheers...
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
we still don't use most of our brains
You really don't believe that myth, do you? It would be more true to say we use 110 percent of our brains, because neurologists haven't located brain areas for everything yet. Sure, I encounter enough stupidity in a week (including my own) to make me wonder if people are really running at 100 percent, but that's more of a software than a hardware problem, right?
...gays dont need women. Yippie. A step further in the 'homocracy'.
Assume That:
1 - You could insulate the embryos from radiation in transit and from harmful g effects;
2 - You could develop an automated process which would permit robotic technology to, either in space or on the ground in a landing pod, "kickstart" such an artficial womb;
3- Assume also we had some uberComputer/Droid that could feed and educationally/emotionally take care of a Primary colony of human children born using this tech (perhaps the biggest assumption of all);
THEN,
You could use this technology to use a relatively slow and VERY sub-light vessel to realistically colonize a star system with human kind using present day technology (apart from this UberMotherDroid). No cold fusion or other exotic tech required. You could do it. For real.
And if its doable for human kind - I see no reason why the engineering is not practicable for other mammals.
In short - you could send out an ARK based on this technology - and we *might* actually be able to pull it off.
Ridiculously hard? Foolishly expensive? Extremely likely to fail? YES. But theoretically possible?
Yes. The breathtaking implication is - Yes, it's doable.
Apart from this application - which would truly be the apex of evolution on this planet - I cannot see how these scientists can possibly justify this research ethically.
I am for applied genetics and I'll even support eugenics where many fear to tread. I'm the kind of guy who WOULD choose to have a genetically "perfect" child if the scenario of GATTACA presented itself to me and my wife.
But this? An artificial womb - a biological TANK for growing humans on earth?
Visceral or not - this just plainly offends me. It's reach-for-the-rifle-time if this is outside of a NASA's hands as far as I'm concerned.
.Robert
There was a thread not long ago about how people with high IQ and advanced education are having far fewer babies than the minimum replacement rate (data gathering was limited only to intustrialized countries). If intelligence has anything to do with IQ and is also to some degree hereditary (plausible assumptions), the inevitable consequence is that evolution currently serves to make humans dumber with every generation.
However, I think many parents who want the best for their children but for some reason cannot produce their own would want to use genetic material from people they admire. This way, you could "adopt" the spawn of Natalie and Linus, and the inconvenience to the two of them would be minimal.
Here's a question you could take as serious, or as a joke--it works both ways...
If you wanted a baby but couldn't use your own genetic materials, who would you want the "parents" to be? I look forward to responses (limit them to people whose DNA is readily obtainable).
Also, it's worth keeping in mind that though this is first being tried with unmodified human eggs, other research shows that we can substitute any human DNA we want into the nucleus of the egg. This means that if we injected Linus DNA into the egg and had AC generously contribute some sperm, we could spawn an unholy kernel-child. There would even be a 25% chance it would be a girl. If we assume the eggs are from reproductive-aged organ donors, creating this child would be very little trouble for both Linus and AC. Not only that--your neigbors could order a Linus/AC spawn and try to raise it too.
It would be strange, but not in any obvious way a bad thing. For one thing, it would help counteract the possible deevolution problem we worried about last week. I think it would be a fine way to pay tribute to the greats: have them provide the DNA for the children you raise. I wonder who would hold the record for most sired children? (I have a feeling I don't want to know the answer, because it's probably someone like Leonardo DeCaprio. Hmmm. Maybe this really wouldn't help against deevolution.)
a development that offers tremendous opportunities for children in the third world, to survive their first year without starving...
Developments like this really offer tremendous opportunities for creating a family for those who cannot have children the old fashioned way.
funny now, its all about shareholder-value and pharmacy-patents.
A fetus is developmentally affected by the natural rhythms/antirhythms of the mother's biochemistry...which will be missing in the artificial womb.
"Oh, well we can reproduce the hormones" is the response of those who think we really have a handle on this whole thing....which we don't. I personally think that bringing a fetus to term via an artificial womb should be considered cruel and inhumane.
I don't know if it's a legend or not or whatever, but I believe there is *a lot* in our brain that we haven't explored yet. Just take for example eastern civilizations - they are able to achieve state of mind which allows them to go weeks without water and food.
Ok, 90% is a far stretch, but I just wanted to say that why add when we haven't explored existing.
boky
I must agree with the core of the statement of the original reply. Nature has a way of selecting and making discriminations about what people can do.
For example: some people can run fast. Should I try to build an artificial leg because I can't but want to? No, it was not my natural talent. And if I can't get childeren, even with some "training" and help, how far am I allowed to go? There is and must be a border.
Mind you, I'm currently trying to get childeren and have no idea if we will succeed! But I do know how far I'm willing go.
Tom
Tbee (or not?)
I was thinking "Developments like this really offer tremendous opportunities for creating a family for those who cannot have children the old fashioned way." ... and for the machines to harvest our bodies for fuel when they TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
A little planning goes a long way...
[giving up mod access for what some right-to-lifer with mod points is going to see as flamebate... but hey, opinion is opinion, and too many people seem to think that their opinions are FACT, so what the hell....]
It's not successful until the device can be proven to gestate a fetus to term, and that said fetus be functional and free of defencts (depending on the old truism of garbage in, garbage out with regards to the genetic materials). "Regulations" have allowed for nothing more than a proof of concept. Yee ha. Test it on a pig or something and see if it really works all the way.
Too many people are shooting straight from the hip with moral panic attacks about this- the results of which are essentially as close minded as "640k ought to be enough for anybody." The morally minded need to shut the fsck up and realize that they have no right to have ANY say in the procreation alternatives of other sentient individuals. I cannot assess wether or not this device is practical for reasons stated above- it's not a functional proof of concept until "regulations" (created or pushed through by the morally minded who seem to exist only to restrict the will of others) allow for a thorough test.
Is it a good idea? Of course; it's advancing science. Medical science and NASA would be about thirty years behind where we are now were it not for German scientific data garnered from the second world war.
The only life you have ANY say in is YOUR OWN. Now keep your mouth shut about why cloning and Gattica-style selective breeding is a bad idea.... because simply put, it doesn't presently exist, so we just don't KNOW, do we? It's not your life, it's not your choice, so fundamentally, it's *not your business* unless you're looking to reproduce and have run out of options.
:-)
Before I read your post - I wrote more or less the same comment drawing the same conslusions you did.
E X A C T L Y the same, more or less.
Put this tech in NASA's hands? Okay. But for use on earth for any purpose other than this?
I agree with the Brave New Worlders on this one.
.Robert
There's a LOT more to an artificial womb than getting the embryo to attach. The baby/mother system has lots of biochemical communication, turning mommy into a nutrient factory for the little tyke under construction.
Her body sacrifices the calcium in her bones, the energetic compounds and trace elements in her fat, and the vitamins in her bloodstream, handing it off to the foetus as directed by a plethora of signals. She gets morning sickness from folic acid deficiency and strange appetites at odd hours ("Honey, run out and get me some Ice Cream and Pickles!") whenever baby needs some oddball compound. And then there's the support, massage, and shaping performed by the bag of muscles the kid lives in for 9 months.
The signals are FAR from all known, and you can bet that kidlet will not form up healthy and happy if you just give him/her a stock nutrient solution rather than adjusting it according to his/her signals.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
... those who die in these experiments.
!= used in a sentence be interpreted
Read it as "not equal"
"of course, larger brains [does] not equal more intelligence"
Actually, the artifical womb story reminded me of the Azi in CJ Cherry's books, like Cyteen and 40,000 in Ghenna.
Scary shit if you really stop to think about it. You could give birth entire species once you develop the technology far enough. Instead of having colony ships filled with people, animals, etc., you could have one filled with frozen genetic material (sperm and ova), ready to be thawed out and grown at the other end...
Or you could make a few hundred clones of Hitler in some underground lab in South America...
Billions of cells die in your body every day, and are replaced. Not every gamete gets a chance to participate in the creation of Yet Another Human Life. Embryos get miscarried every day.
A clump of cells is about as sacred as any other clump of cells before sentience is involved. If you guys want to jump up and down about something, do something to help the kids who are here, living in poverty or abuse or God knows what, and shouldn't be.
-- INTX Grouch. http://www.midnightblue.net
Mares are sexier than women anyway. They have sexier female parts - and tails.
But the really cool thing is that all you have to get them for valentine's day is a few carrots.Or the like- I can't imagine that people such as Helms or some of the bums and genetic rejects I see on the bus could convievably be the result of a traditional pregnancy. Unless the mom took PCP like vitamins and drank like a fish.
IIRC, the Russians or Germans did some experiments along these lines in the early part of the 20th century. Not the artificial womb, so much as artificial maintenance of newborns- the control group was cared for in the ways you would expect; lotsa love and care and baby talk and all that other stuff.
The subject group had their base physical needs taken care of, and that was IT. The nurses did not interact with the newborns in any affectionate capacity. The results were pretty interesting- the subject group - you'll love this- died. All of them.
A device like this is an important step forward, but it's not going to produce viable results without additional stimulation. While you can theoretically grow an embryo in a tube like you would a chicken in an egg... ya gotta remember that chickens don't go to school or talk.
It's an important thing to note that while it's been proven through the above example that once the fetus is out in the world it needs care and *attention*- but we have ZERO *proof* that the stimulation you mention has any serious bearing on the infant, for the fact that we cannot- not even now, due to "regulations"- test this hypothesis!
Worldly stimuli is quite possibly entirely optional. As for my own curiosity, I would think that pheremones and nutritional intake have a serious bearing, as that shapes the physical development. Beyond that.... hey, my oldest memory would be from about the age of 18 months or so, and it's a pretty danged fuzzy one at that.
The Japanese had built an artificial womb some years ago, and raised a goat to term in it... http://www.lucifer.com/~sean/BT/21.html#21womb
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
You'll just have to hope they didn't put alcohol in your blood surrogate.
--
Intelligence is definitely a recessive trait.
Army, Navy, Marines... they all get to test things like nerve gas and vaccinations so the masses don't have to. It's part of the job description- hundreds die to prove a hypothesis or run a test trial of something at MIGHT work. And you never hear about it.
It's a proven fact that war triggers massive technological innovation. Given the social and genetic diversity of the human race, there will ALWAYS be those that are in the eyes of others "morally questionable", who are willing to do these types of experiments in the advance of human knowledge.
And we scream bloody murder in moral outrage, beat their asses, take their data and build on it with our hands clean. Our society would be a mere shadow of what it is now had that little "opinion poll" of yours gone through... and the fact of the matter is that despite everything that happened during that period in time, the human race is BETTER for it all as a result.
Developments like this really offer tremendous opportunities for creating a family for those who cannot have children the old fashioned way.
Yeah, like mad scientists.
This is as stupid as saying that gay people will eventually "weed themselves out" because they can't breed. Some traits are not hereditary.
Maintaining instinctive sex recognition and preference for behavior essential to procreation is a process of constant culling. The tiniest defect can make a person insufficiently interested in sex, intolerant of children and unfit to raise them, or interested exclusively in biologically incompatible breeding partners.
Natural variation is biased towards defects such as these by its random nature. The reason is very simple: a random change to the genetic code is overwhelmingly more likely to be detrimental than benficial. Biologically defective individuals generally don't breed, and thus natural selection's bias against defects balances this out. This doesn't mean that fatal defects ever stop recurring.
Toss out the natural selection, and suddenly the evolutionary process is biased towards defects as strongly as natural variation is. If the circumstance which prevents natural selection is ever removed, the species will be less able to survive.
More ways to create people, like we don't have enough already... (people that is)
what will replace the umbilical cord if this ever comes into practice?
Deal with it.
I agree, if fertility treatment and artificial wombs are available, it should be free.
6 204 857 565
After previewing: 6 204 858 037
It would be a completely different birth. No mother-screaming-in-pain. No panic. No grandparents-rushing-to-hospital-later. You could assemble the whole family, everyone could be relaxed and ready, and the baby could be "hatched" into the arms of its happy, fully aware, ready-to-nurture parents.
On the other hand, the mother, if any, wouldn't be lactating. Oh well. That can be dealt with I suppose.
You are so right.
We have no idea what we're getting into. And we have no idea what we don't know yet about the natural gestation process.
It is a silly and frankly stupid notion that everyone has a right to reproduce biologically, and that that right must be enabled by expensive new technology. If you can't make a child naturally, you can adopt one. God knows there are enough already who need to be adopted.
... it's very is to trip and fall down with your nose on the ground.
Maybe we could also develop airbag-noses to go with big brains???
"Developments like this really offer tremendous opportunities for creating a family for those who cannot have children the old fashioned way."
Yeah, and growing an army of Uber-Soldats in your basement !
It's interesting that humans seem to be so hell-bent on engineering ourselves to extinction. Everyone here would have to admit that mother nature is a hell of a lot smarter then we are. As such, wouldn't you agree that if nature thinks someone be it man or woman shouldn't reproduce, then maybe science shouldn't step in and let them have children anyway?
The human race is getting weaker and weaker due to all the medicines and anti-biotics we take. It will be interesting to see what happens when those medicines stop having any effect on disease.
again somthing we can do. but should we?
there are so many children on this planet, who don't have parents. don't they deserve a chance?
just because someone has the money, should they do this? there is so much money "wasted", which could make the world a better place.
human race should get over its selfish attitude.
evolution is often linked to reproduction. i also like the idea of having children, who will carry my genes. but we might have to evolve in our heads.
we have much more to give to the children of our world than birth. what about a future?
A sheep conceived and gestated through entirely artificial means seems to me just as amazing as a cloned sheep, and you can then start working on humans once you have the bugs out of the system.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
Over 10 years ago in Japan they raised a sheep outside of the womb. I remember it was in a pink solution and had a bunch of tubes hooked up to it's belly button. They showed it kicking around.
I think it was in 92 I saw this on TV in highschool.
but when is ThinkGeek getting artificial vaginas?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
One of the key gains that women have made is economic security. Before the feminist movement, the traditional Western female was confined to role of homemaker and controlled by her financial dependence on men, particularly her husband.
In the same way, men can now achieve reproductive indepenance.
Where's the featus going to gestate ? You going to keep it in a box !
:)
Apparently yes
Wouldn't you say that the people in Brave New World were quite happy? Granted, monstrously clean and neat, but still rather happy? They had purpose in life, and seemed satisfied, gamma or alpha.
Anyhow, this is part of what makes great literature great. It is multifaceted and nuanced. You hear me, soulless action authors? John Grisham or whatever your name is?
Stop the brainwash
The only thing I have to say is that the world is already severely overcrowded with human beings for our current modes of supply and distribution of resources. This is the biggest problem on the planet. If people can't have children, then they probably shouldn't have children.
(childless by choice)
Wresting control of reproduction out of the anarchic whims of parents and placing it under state control was essential to Huxley's totalitarian dystopia.
You appear to have mispelled utopia.
My Journal
Why is this moderited as Insightful, rather than Funny?
A team of scientists working in secret in Antarctica have announced the successful trial run of the Temporal Manipulation Device, a.k.a. the "Time Machine"
Perhaps somebody can go to the year 802701 and save the Precious Moments people from the Morlocks?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'm beginning to understand why people fly airplanes into our buildings...
dear scientists,
we would like to praise you for your recent advancements in producing artificial uteruses (uteri?). however, we feel you should now turn your attention to a much more urgent and pressing matter: the cloning of vaginas. thank you for your attention to this matter.
sincerely,
men.
do not read this line twice.
Anyone with the strength of will to read all of the Dune novels learns of this.
/.!
Don't forget those who have the strength of will to read
"If you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're right." -
I'm sure many of the Slashdot readers are familiar with the concept of exponential growth. If you aren't, take a look at a timeline graph of the human population. When you do, one thing should be abundantly clear: THERE ARE TOO MANY GODDAMN PEOPLE. Quit procreating! Instead of selfishly having kids just because "you want them", try thinking about the long-term effects of your actions on not only the planet, but the rest of the human population. All this does is ensure that there is plenty of cannon fodder when the nukes start flying.
soon every child would have to be delivered through a cesaerian because men would evolve to grow bigger heads. Heads too big to fit through the female pelvis are the main concern.
In that case, if a larger head were really an evolutionary advantage, the pelvis would evolve in parallel. Heck, in eight or so kilocenturies, the head might get so big that we look like those Precious Moments figurines.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Anyone see the scary resemblence? At least we'll never forget that III is our planet number and not the name of our planet.
Cool, now we can make spice =)
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
What's up over there in the States? Is it rendered illegal to adopt a poor child from your local community or even a poor foreign country? Or is it unpopular now, because that cute little kiddie might have terrorist genes because it came from Somalia?
Speaking as an (adoptive) parent, there are a bunch of reasons.
Adoption works. It's truly sad that so few people understand that.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
AFAIK we still don't use most of our brains
A human uses all of his brain in a given day, just not all at the same moment. In a way, the human brain is built like a Pentium 4 processor: the brain has functional units for everything, but not all of them can be fed at one time. Also, like the P4, the brain has power supply and heat dissipation issues that keep it from full utilization; people are said to undergo "burnout" after heavy mental exertion.
Will I retire or break 10K?
When your head is 1/3 of your full body mass, it's very is to trip and fall down with your nose on the ground.
That's one reason why the nose will be reduced to a small bump in future humans, the forehead will be enlarged, there will be thicker hair to cushion the fall, and the eyes will be shaped like teardrops. In other words, we'll look like Precious Moments figurines. And yes, the pelvis will evolve a larger opening.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Even if Roe vs. Wade were overturned tomorrow, few states would pass anti-abortion laws, meaning that all anyone has to do to get an abortion is cross over to a state where it's legal.
United States law has all sorts of laws "It is a felony to cross state lines to commit crimes A, B, or C."
Will I retire or break 10K?
one of the greatest barriers to human evolution is the size of brain that can be birthed successfully
The pelvis would evolve. See my earlier comment.
Will I retire or break 10K?
from my mother. She was pissed at man (prolly my father did something stupid) and said... just wait until we dont need man anymore! Then we can get rid of all. I stuck in my brain like only few very early memorys do. gotta ask her if she remembered saying that? Good thing scientist are still mainly male :)
Then again it's much harder to create life (sperm) then to extend existing life (womb)
"Developments like this really offer tremendous opportunities for creating a family for those who cannot have children the old fashioned way." reminds me of the strip where calvin asks his dad where babies come from. It went something like "Most people buy kits from Sears, but your mom and I got yours at Kmart, on a Blue Dot special."
I don't think we need to make it any easier to reporduce. We should be thinking of ways to reduce the population.
Can you say "soylent green"?
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with. - Tennessee Williams
At least a pig is a natural environment. Mamals are complex organisms; their developmental needs are not limited to biological.
science is a religion
I hear all those points about survival of the fittest, passing on the best genes, darwinism, etc.
But what about human values? What's wrong with bringing into the world a human being that is not perfect? What is perfection? Blond hair? Blue eyed? Perfect teeth? (chilling thoughts of Nazi arian race superiority concepts)
I'd like to hear from parents of childrend who have disabilities from birth, tell us how much they love their children and how they bring happiness into their lives withouth being perfect.
Man, sometimes people forget that human beings are not only animals, but spiritual beings as well.
http://www.club977.com/ - The 80's Channel!
Your source for commercial free 80's music!
6 billion people and counting, do we really need research in how to make more? Try adoption.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
This is the ONLY way 95% of the slashdot crowd can even hope to reproduce. God knows they won't get LAID. Of course, there is the possibility of this technology leading to an upswell in autism, hemophilia, and the like. One look at this crowd and you KNOW someone's mother is someone's sister.
What do you want, lisp's "eq/eql/equal"?
(not (equal '(large brain) '(intelligence)))
yowie. volcans aren't sexy, strike a compromize.
I think it sounds great! Women can have children now without ever having to go through pregnancy. No morning sickness, no weird cravings, no hormonal imbalance, no labor, none of the ripping and tearing during actual birth, no cesarian sections, no death-by-childbirth. And none of the post-partisan depression that occurs after pregnancy, and none of the losing-your-figure.
And for we men, no more hearing about all of it.
Pregnancy is scary. Not this.
PUBLIC SPLIT ON WHETHER BUSH IS A DIVIDER -CNN scrolling banner, 10/15/2004
not that that's an obligation or anything...
But it's flamebait.
There are ethical concerns about everything medical, because of the political agenda of anti-progress religions. You fundamentalists need to shut the fuck up about theology. Theology can make an argument for or against anything.
I know I'm going to get modded down for this, but go ahead! I've never cared about karma anyway.
rcs1000, tell me this: since when is the word "overpopulated" a euphemism for racism? I've never noticed, myself. I always understood it to mean that the planet currently has more people living on it than can be sustained over the long term. Pretty simply idea, really. If you have too many people (or just a few people using too many resources!) then you won't be able to provide food, clean water, and shelter for those people without straining the planets ability to rovide the raw materials you need and to recycle the waste materials you produce.
Nothing more than that.
And *if* as you claim, overpopulation is just a code word for wanting to control specific groups, then please tell me which groups need controlling? Is is the Indians because they have 700 million people? Or is it the Americans because we have 280 million and use the resources of a billion?
Sticking your head in the sand and claiming that population control is equivalent to trying to divide the population into controllable groups, is no going to help us get our problems under control. In fact, the very first thing we need to do in order to get a handle on overpopulation is to do exactly the opposite of what you describe; instead of dividing the world into different groups, we need to be working to erase the divisions that already exist. Overpopulation is a global problem and it cannot be solved from a national perspective: one problem, one world, one people.
___
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Personally, I think that to have children when you cannot afford to feed them is the product of selfishness and ignorance. Anyone with an education and scruples would abhor such a cruel act as bringing a life into this world when it's only potential is to starve and suffer. A conspiracy of wealthy bigots to depopulate the poor is no justification for having children you can't feed or shelter. Sadly, the people who most need to internalize these attitudes are the same people who lack even an opportunity to educate themselves. I would label them as mostly blameless due to their lack of knowledge, but tragically wrong.
it's all fine & nice that we can circumvent natural selection in another way. rah rah, hooray humanity, look what we can do, we're getting better.....
this feat of technology circumvents natural selection. i believe that if people couldn't have kids because of some defect/inability, then that's nature's way of saying "THIS GENEPOOL STOPS HERE. IT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH."
why do we do these things? the goodness of our dumb old hearts... is exactly that. good, but dumb.
i'm amazed that i survived - an airbag saved my life.
...because raising clones is just as much work as raising any other child to become a soldier.
Think about raising one of a set of twins. Is that child any less work to raise, with diapers, feeding, teaching and attention?
Cloning doesn't get you faster or cheaper soldiers, only less diverse soldiers. The advantage of soldiers from a free society is that such soldiers are used to using their own initiative. In the Gulf War, even though there were multitudes of Iraqi soldiers, most surrendered almost immediately due to low morale, lack of logistical support and overwhelming technological superiority in an environment (a flat desert) where guerrilla tactics allowed by Viet Nam's jungles and villages were not possible.
Try reading Possony and Pournelle's classic textbook "The Strategy of Technology" at jerrypournelle.com or the award-winning and very popular science fiction of Lois McMaster Bujold, particularly "The Borders of Infinity" novella, "Labrynth" or her novel "Ethan of Athos".
The future of soldiery is about creativity and diversity, not massed attacks of identically raised clones with similarly tendencied styles of behaviour. If you want to deal with a serious enemy soldier, think of how tough the citizen soldiers of Greece were against Persian conscripts.
I kind of object to the term "old fashioned way".
How about we use the term "natural way"?
I don't like big words..., does that make me anti-semantic?
Thousands upon thousands of childern in this nation alone need to be adopted. A struggling foster care program begs for honest good people to help kids before it is too late,
:)
please people, DO NOT have any more f*cking kids.
If you feel that a little microscopic grouping of molecules makes all that much difference as to whether or not you can love a child, then please, do not have any childern. You are too short sighted.
But if you are of the reasonable and decent type, then for crying out loud, ADOPT. Do _NOT_ have any more childern, do NOT fill up this world any more then it needs to be.
If you spend hunderds of thousands of dollars (or even just tens of thousands) going to extremes to have your 'own' child, then you are not only keeping an innocent baby from having a home but you have just spent more $$$ in a nice way that shows exactly how egotistical and self-fucking-centered we of western civilization are.
Bah, no wonder the world thinks we (mostly us in the USA, but you Europeans are not getting off of this one either) are a bunch of self centered fuckwits.
(and if you already have adopted, may whatever Diety, Dieties, or scientific conjucture(s) you believe in, bless you.)
Now then, on the other hand this presents a WONDERFUL opportunity for birthing almost extinct animals.
w00t. Hey, we have any more Dodo bird genes left lying around?
hey that would even be popular, think of all the The World's Funniest Animal Home Videos episodes you could make off of just Dodo birds.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Sounds like a way to mass produce kids "Hey where were you born?" "Sector 4, Area 3, Womb 28381" "You?"
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of one of these!!!
Objections to this kind of technology always boil down to control. The fact is that use of an artificial womb, assuming the thing actually works, would harm *no one*. It would, in fact, make it possible for women who couldn't otherwise safely bear children to do so without a surrogate and the possibility that the surrogate would attempt to steal the child through legal means (as has been done in the past). It would also make it possible for women who didn't want the inconvenience of pregnancy to have a child without that inconvenience - not medically required, but who am I to condemn women to 'natural' pregnancy when an alternative is available? It isn't for me, or you for that matter, to tell a woman how her body has to be used and what she can do with it.
No, the objections aren't about trying to keep someone from doing something to us (artifical wombs wouldn't adversely affect *any of us reading this*), but rather about forcing others to live according to our views. Don't like the idea of artificial wombs? Pass a law banning them, *even though their use would affect our lives in no fashion whatsoever*. A closet mysogynist would use the same tactics to check any advance made in releasing women from the necessity of biology, since closet mysogynists always oppose any additional freedom that might be had by women. Alas, the technical fields are chock-full of mysogynistic bastards who wax lyrical about the advances of science until such advances are applied to the opposite sex.
A true objector would do the rational thing: refuse to use the artificial womb. An objector with hidden motivations rooted in imposing controls over others (in this case women) would insist that the technology itself be banned. If you want to know who the objectors are and who the women-haters are, it's quite simple to tell them apart in this case. Just read what they post and ask: are they refusing to use the technology for themselves, or are they insisting that others not use it as well? Answer this question and you separate the objectors from the malicious control freaks.
And please, don't give me any crap about how it 'might harm the child', or some such rot. You know no such thing. You have no such evidence. *Because it hasn't been done yet*. Until you have empirical evidence in hand, shut your yaps on the 'save the children!' arguments - it's just another variation on 'do what the hell I tell you!' theme, clothed in false altruism.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
larger brains != more intelligence
is "does not imply". The answer is that != can have a variety of context-defined meanings when used in human language, as opposed to where it belongs, programming language.
Possible interpretations of !=
1. is not equal to
2. does not infer/imply
3. excludes
Games Workshop Petition
Who said evolution has to stop? Perhaps evolution is much larger then us and we are STILL playing it out....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I wonder what he would think about this?
My sig sucks.
If this happens everytime some research might 'offend' someone, we wil quickly find us slipping into the dark ages as a 3rd world nation status, where we live off the handouts from greater nations.. Research should not be impeaded by the govermental winds... Only the application of such ....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
but you can't terminate it in the first to do
research that could save lives...
You can, you idiot. What Bush did was to say the federal government won't give you money to do it. The same was true during Clinton's time in office. I wonder why people didn't bitch and moan about it then
You're right for now. But I can feel a ban coming in my one knee.
In any case, I wonder why the two seem to be such different ethical issues to many people?
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Here goes the last chance of change... until now women had us in the hand. But instead of using that lever, they infighted and repeated our worst mistakes. And now they are obsolete. Thanks for not using your chance as long as you had it, thanks for being so damn weak and quiet. Thanks for putting up with us, I'm sure men will be eternally grateful and not treat you bad.
I don't think we will survive this invention. Maybe something will survive, maybe it will flood the whole fucking universe, but it will miss a lot of features that made us human IMHO.
It's a man's world, but it wouldn't be nothing without the love of a woman, remember that song? Nothing, here we come.
I'm not going to make an ad hominem argument about whether you wear glasses or will buy a hearing aid as you age, but I think you may be thinking of evolution as "nature red in tooth and claw", rather than as a way of genes perpetuating themselves.
Think of the evolutionary advantage to humans of better understanding the universe. In that sense, Stephen Hawking is likely more advantageous to the long-term survival of human genes than you or I are.
Think of the value of cooperation. The first half of the last century was about how wars of conquest no longer are cost-effective, while the last half was about how trade works better than war as a way of benefitting humanity.
Cooperation can lead to mutual survival: think of the intestinal bacteria in every human being that supplies each of us with essential Vitamin K.
Of course, you can also argue the Mongol strategy of killing nearly everyone in your path and resetting the population value around you to make sure your genes are more common by decreasing the total population, but eventually others learn to strike back.
All these are evolutionary changes in the short and long term. You may want to think about evolution in a broader sense than your post seemed to consider.
We could discover that we had improperly measured out the amount of hormones necesary to give the XY fetus male genitals.
The fetus itself produces required hormones.
Every peice of genetic code is only functional in the context of the mother's womb.
That's a nonsense.
And the phrase is "Moral Terrorism". You've just committed an act of it. Now knock it off.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Utopia = a vision of a perfect society
Dystopia = a vision of a society gone perfectly wrong
Yes, dystopia is a real word.
No, Aldous Huxley NEVER intended Brave New World to be a vision of what the future ought to be.
See this review at Amazon.com
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
You seem to have missed the funniness of his post...
Am I the only one who's wondering how in the world this got past the ethics board? If I remember my medical ethics correctly, new proceedures are supposed to be tested on animals first and people later. Not the other way around. That's shady ethics.
And the whole "science by press release" mentality speaks to me of shady science. After scanning the web page for Cornell's Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility, I could not find any reference to published documentation of Dr. Liu's work. It annoys me when the media draws attention to unpublished (and potentially unreproducable) work just because its "trendy."
Let's see.. If I follow, someone willing to "have a baby" that they couldn't otherwise have may get that opportunity (In the process, increase the already out of control population. Rather than adopting one of the thousands of poor kids who need homes). Of course, the baby the couple would be having will have only been able to be created using NAZI like science to study the possibility of such "breakthroughs". Kill a baby today, and you can have one tommorrow... not very good science (or ethics).
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
It seems to me that a state would be fully ok in banning abortion of a fetus in an artificial womb since the privacy issue doesn't come into play with the fetus being completely outside of the the woman's body. There goes the "my body, my choice" argument.
The Texas Myth.
The upshot is that even with optimistic assumptions, the amount of space people need in support vastly outstrips the mere "living space" (housing) they need. The proportion is sobering.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
If this technology develops further, there will be some staggering implications for premature births. Our daughter was born eleven weeks early at 820g (~1 lb 13oz). She spent 3 amazing/stressful months in a neonatal intensive care unit and is now a perfectly normal 2 1/2 year old.
If a high-quality artificial womb were around, we probably would have been advised to put our daughter into it. If she was smaller/earlier/worse prognosis, we might even have been told that not using an artifical womb would kill her. Someone using an artifical womb to conceive (like IVF) at least makes a decision about what to pursue in advance based on their own ethics. In a problem pregnancy, the mother might well be compelled/pressured to use one, regardless of her beliefs.
Think about setting up an adoption agency down at the sperm bank. A little room in the back could house hundreds of them and bring life to as many highly desirable children the "market" will support. Oh yeah, the real orphans will have to sit in institutions. They will be joined by the 75% (like Dolly!) of those hudreds that fail to be perfect every year. Those that live that is. Won't it be nice to subsidize such a place by institutionalizing all of defective products? Kinda sucks for the legitmate orphans too that they can only go to the people who can't afford to get a perfect child. One day the technology will be better than that. When it's more reliable than natural birth, it should be considered. Even then it should be well considered. People are not cattle and should never be sired like them.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
And you can carry the burden of guilt when that first test baby comes out horribly wrong. But you have nothing to worry about, because your hand waiving has surely taken into account all of the important details.
I know what a dystopia is, I just don't think that BNW is one.
My Journal
...genetherapy, cloning and artifical womb.
All we now need is some nutcase to create a religion around it.
/Okl
I love'em, but we have made a conscious decision to only have 1.
I of course feel for those unable to reproduce, but we have past the point where the world can naturally sustain us and deal with all we do as we cling to survival.
We need a better quality of life for the people who are already here, not more people.
rjf&
I'll just pack up my things an move to the savage reservation now. This technology should be very scary to anyone who has read Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" If you have not read the book, and think this advancement is a good idea, then check the book out.
George W. Bush signs up for artificial brain.
The artificial vagina would be the real holy grail... alas, us techies aren't doing the research on this on. Although I imagine those researchers could probably make use of one as well (assuming they are male).
...a corporation buys some sperm, buys some eggs, and makes a baby with an artificial womb. At what point during that process can they be allowed to destroy what they've made?
Conception?
Viability outside the artificial womb?
Birth?
Majority?
Never?
My guess is, should such a technology ever reach the point of being able to carry a baby to term, the same rights and limitations will apply to the owners of the technology as apply to women now, for simply practical reasons. Rights as they exist now strike something of a balance between the duty of the state to protect the helpless, the right of the individual for self-determination, and the practical matter of having the right person make the decision.
I cannot derive ethics from first principles, and ethics generally seem to arise from practical considerations anyway. But some people claim to be able to.
And so, if one thinks that it is ethically wrong for a corporation to terminate a healthy blastula, how can one think that it is ethically right for a woman to do the same thing?
The second derivative of the space-luck curve is infinite at my nexus, at least on the pong axis.
There is much more to being gesticulated than just getting nourishment from your umbilical cord. Imagine the possible emotional and psychological effects on a creature that did not experience his/her mother's heartbeat, warmth, movement, etc. pre-natally. It makes me shudder.
/.?
A fetus developng in another woman's body is still gesticulating NATURALLY. Is that a forbidden word on
Humans are not machines! Technology is not enlightenment!
-- Aaron
That's pretty funny. I'd have chosen 1984, which is definitely a dystopia.
My Journal
That aside, I take exception to your unholy kernel child. I'd like to know where you got your figure of 25% for the probability of a female baby from. You obviously either have little or no understanding of genetics, or statistics, or both. The chances of Linus and (male) AC having a female child are 50%. The possible combinations are XY,XX,YY, each with a probability of 33%. YY would not produce a viable embryo, so that leaves XY and XX that will carry to term, both with equal probability. 100/2 = 50%
Given the ability to insert genetic material at will into the ovum, then surely using material from the parents' own somatic cells would be preferable?
Games Workshop Petition
The colonisation proposal is viable, but if high speed travel does become a possibility, then we could probably then overtake the colony ship before it reached its destination, assuming we knew where to find a destination, that is.
I would say you are correct in your assumption that the most difficult part of the project would be raising the children - it would seem that a lot of human parents have difficulty in this area, so a lot of research would be required before it would be remotely possible.
As for the biological tank, that is basically what a woman is, as far as the foetus is concerned. It is obviously more complex than that, but if prosthetic limbs and organ transplants are ethical (and not all would say they are), then this cannot be worse.
I'm pretty sure you'd only agree to eugenics if you were allowed to choose the parameters - would you agree so readily if you or your children fell into the "superfluous" category?
Games Workshop Petition
What position is that?
...for you folks who spend so much of your time caring about this shit, that you soon figure out you're too old to have children the old-fashioned way.
geek-guy, ott.canada... anyone with a 'real' womb care to 'evolute'? geek-girls need only apply ;)
too easy...
"Is it a good idea? Of course; it's advancing science. Medical science and NASA would be about thirty years behind where we are now were it not for German scientific data garnered from the second world war."
You must have mistyped this or have a total lack of understanding about the concept of "good". The advancement of science is a "good idea" as long as those who weild it are "good people".
The so-called medical knowledge acquired from torturing and killing Jews in concentration camps could not possibly have been a "good thing". Raining Britian and Russia with bombs with airplane and rocket technology in an attempt to subjugate and/or anihilate the British and Russian people was not any good, either. Nor would any "good" have come from their attempt to weild atomic technology.
Be very careful with the label "good". The creation of an artificial womb will no doubt be a "good thing" when it is applied by good people for good purposes. However, while not limiting the progress of science and its powerful outcomes, we the powerful should limit its application by known baddies.
I agree that sentient individuals should apply technology to themselves in any way they please. The problem, of course, arises when technology is imposed by bad people to the interference of the intentions of sentient individuals. These bad people get what is coming to them, as a particular bad man in a cave somewhere (who grossly misapplied airplane technology) is going to find out in a serious way.
Yes, I do believe in good and bad, and you should, too.
Oh, and one last thing. May I challenge you to explain to us all, in detail, exactly how in the world 3 or 4 years of torturous medical experiments in WWII advanced medicine 30 years. Please do this, or print out that paragraph and slowly eat it.
Does this remind anyone else of Frank Herbert's axlotl tanks? Kinda scary. Maybe we can artificially create the spice melange now ;-)
Um, eugenics how? I believe all your points may be true, and maybe I'm just being blind, but how is my position even related to eugenics?
Oh. Nevermind. Just read through your webpage. If eugenicists are pro choice, that doesn't make pro choice people eugenicists. Simple logical fallacy. It's unfortunate for pro-choice people to have eugenicists associate themselves. Just as it's unfortunate for pro-lifers to have clinic bombers and Pat Buchanan associate themselves with the pro-lifers. I'm pro-choice and eugenics is insane.
Is there any other way in which the extension of my point is eugenics? Because I really don't see it.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
It seems clear to me that this technology has a ways to go yet, but I personally would look forward to the day that it is a commonplace technique, preferred to natural childbearing. Once developed, it would certainly be easier on the mother, less stressful for the father, and safer for the child.
"The simplest solution is to ignore your dead children."
Which was stolen from the old "elite" and scene guys in the golden age of pirate BBS's, except back then, the letters that got capitalized weren't selected at random. Basically all vowels were lower-case, consonants upper-case, zeros replaced with lower-case 'o' and as much extended ASCII in your handle as possible.
For example...
RaZoR 1911, ACiD, iCE, iNC, 96oo BauD oNLY.
Some sci-fi novels (such as those by Julian May) describe a method very similar to this which was used to help boost populations of newly colonised worlds. Families would adopt and raise a few of the 'nonborns' as their own. In the unlikely event we ever manage to do this (that goes for getting off the planet was well as perfecting this technology) this could be a legitimate use for it.
> Embroys successfully attached themselves to the walls of these wombs and
Embroys? What are those?
is no longer a problem in humans. We can grow any and everybody regardless whether they have a disease that would have prevented propagation in the past.
and it's something i've long been waiting for.
Didn't we all know it would happen? We are just complex machines, after all, if nature can do it so can we, technology and time allowing...
This pleases me because i'm an athiest, and get sick to my stomach when I hear these right-wing nuts on political type talk shows, Politically Incorrect, for example, spurting off about how "life begins at conception". My argument has always been, that all you need is a strand of DNA and you can make a person - what's missing is the machinery, womb, initial cells, etc.
I don't mean to insult - think about it this way, the term, 'right-wing nuts' should not insult the avarage person, which, at least in this country, does believe in god and is not a fanatic. Even the pope believes in evolution - the nuts I am referring to really are a minority - but with seemingly VAST influence in political circles, alas...
Well, we are one step closer to that - besides the positive health implications, this helps me in a true pro-abortion argument, one based on science. Sorry for the feminists, but "right to my body" has always seemed a bit weak of an argument to me...if what you have growing inside is human, you then both merely share that space - so who is to say that the woman has more right, unless you consider that she was there first perhaps...
Of course, I think that a fetus is not a person and therefore not entitled to human rights, and therefore, can be aborted without moral dilema.
This story is great amnution for these arguments, especially here in the bible belt, where the nationwide wide drop in teen pregnancy hasn't taken hold yet, but the poor girls refuse abortion as even a consideration on religious/fals moral grounds.
Send them out to mine for valuable materials aboard massive computer regulated ships.
I suggest we call them 'Megazones'.
Better yet... Unreal Tournament.
You know what i am talking about.
All incoming mail has been ignored; lameness filter finally woke up.
0xC3
I seem to recall that this was successfully done in the 70's by a researcher at Stanford. The project was cancelled due to protests.
I think you summed up the problem very well. On that note, I would like to recommend the book "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn, to anyone who is concerned about our apparent plan of growing and growing and growing until we have sucked all the life out of this planet, and to anyone who is trying to work out just exactly what went wrong here.
See also the online essays at the Ishmael website:
http://www.ishmael.com/Education/Writings/
My wife's uterus was damaged by uterine fibriods. As a result she is unable to bear children. Barring adoption, the only option we have is a suragate mother, and option we dread to try. I plan to be at that conference in Oklahoma to learn more.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
...we've come upon another technology that could be amazing or horrific. It brings to mind the old adage "The love of money is the root of all evil" and the fact that most people leave out the first three words when they recall it. I'm an advocate of developing technology (or I wouldn't be here), Without offering my personal views that will offend at least one person, I think it is safe to safe that I believe this should be cautiously pursued.
Wise enough to win the world, fool enough to lose it
That gullible isn't in the dictionary?
This is a hoax, folks. Come on, they usually start with rats, then move to monkeys or something else. Nothing about this story on any of the major news sources.
Of couse, if it's on slashdot, then it's gotta be true.
Move, along. Nothing to see here.
Finally!!! Now all I need is one of these gadgets and a RealDoll ( or even a Stepford wife robot) and I won't have to deal with the bitching and moaning... except my own bitching and moaning because I have to reboot wife 3.5.6 three times a day. :)
There is a secretary where I work that has four kids (and will probably have more) just to collect the welfare money. THIS is where overpopulation becomes a much more important factor. It is caused exactly because of the same thing that has become all too important in society today: Money. Welfare, as it is right now, helps very few people 'legitimately'. Either we need to stop capitalism (yeah, right) or we need to rework the welfare system.
Like Robin Hood: Robbing from the Rich and Giving to the Poor, it's WELFARE!
[insert witty comment here]
Yo. Lighten up.
:). So save yourself some real world grief and pick up some tactfulness now in a relatively anonymous place like Slashdot.
Yo. Straighten up. I would laugh if I didn't have to put up with this in the real world-thinly veiled jokes expressing attitudes toward women. Out in cyberspace, I can't tell what you really mean, even with a
Hey, I feel your pain. I hear jokes all the time about how stupid men are relationship-wise. I laugh anyway, since they're mostly true.
I've got tact. I like to pull it out and spring it on people right when they think I'm gonna be all gauche and stuff. You've got problems with condescension. (Not that I mind - as demonstrated by the retaliatory condescension in that very sentence. (: )
Finally, it's not a :), it's a (:. In my world, to read things, I have to pitch to the right a lot more often than to the left - you know, book spines, CD spines, etc. (Sure, French books and a very few CD jackets are the opposite - but that's a small minority in my world.)
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
This eerily sounds like the movie matrix. All we need is some computers that are smart enough to think for themselves.
You've got problems with condescension.
:)
Well, duh. Especially when it comes to jokes about how genitalia contribute to logic or any such nonsense.
Welcome to my world.
Good point, poor example. How many lines about brains vs genitalia have you heard about women? The only ones in that category I ever hear are about the two warring nerve centers of the male. (:
Hey, thanks for the hospitality, gotta go..
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
As far as the heritability of intelligence goes, there is tons of data showing that IQ is hereditary. Of course, there is no "proof" that IQ has any relevance to intelligence, because that's not the sort of thing that you prove. Intelligence is a way of behaving, so it is in principle measurable. On every proposed method of measuring intelligence, we find that it is inherited (which is to say that the intelligence of the people who contribute the genetic material is statistically significant to the intelligence of the offspring). It's fine to be an ostrich about these studies, but less so to get all high and mighty about how smart you are and then blurt out crap.
...in another post to another response to this thread.
Essentially:
Bad people do bad things and learn interesting things from it. Good people put the smack down on bad people and not only get to do the victory dance, they get all of the data gained by the bad people while keeping their hands blood free.
Skin grafts. Nerve gas. Explosive decompression. Pressure experimentation. Vaccinations and germ warfare. The weapons technology race to beat a nation that had the upper hand in every way save overall manpower against the rest of the world.
Was the expermination done a good thing? Possibly not... but the fact of the matter is that the data gained WAS a good thing, and has been put to VERY good use [the space program is the best example- rocket technology and space suits were prototyped by the germans during the second world war.]
Consider that people are always going to have funky motives in the eyes of others- and that in the end run, a hell of a lot of good has come from a hell of a lot of bad. Would I trade world war two never happening for the moon landing? Hell no. Both events have done far more for the advancement of mankind as a global civilization than possibly any other event in history. It just so happens that the tech to get to the moon was borne from german war science.
Read some Moorecock. There is no good, there is no bad- which is which gets decided by the winners. Hitler was just as morally justified in bombing England as Truman was nuking Hiroshima- it's all a matter of perspective and the fact that Truman wins the opinion poll hands down every time [self included, mind you.].
Stick to your "good people, bad people" argument, and the next thing I know you'll be arguing that Colonel Tibbets should have been executed for war crimes.
There's no being careful with "good" when it comes to technology or technological innovations. Tech and knowledge are neither good nor bad- they're a tool, a means to an end. It just so happened that WWII Germany happened to use methods that are despised by the rest of the world in the acquisition of that information- and garnering it through other methods would have likely taken years- if not decades- longer. Refer to my Moorecock statement- their methods are despised for the fact that they lost. Had they won, we'd never even know about them.
I will, after this pinch-hitting as devil's advocate, concede that the Nazi scientific practices are emotionally offensive to anyone with half of a brain. Our society has a manifest distaste for those sorts of methods, which is totally understandable. On the other hand, where there those willing to *volunteer* for such experiments.... hey, there's nothing wrong with that. I cannot condone experimenting on unwilling subjects, but I cannot deny the value of the information that these experiments have added to the knowledge base of the human race.
Seems like you can- crank your life view settings from two bit to greyscale and look at the big picture. Be objective and actually *THINK* about it.... rather than *FEEL* about it- that's where I'm coming from: in the case of my statements I've chosen to play science and cold fact over emotion.... nevermind the fact that my *feelings* on the matter are similar to yours.
Hell, if anything, deal with the fact that not everyone has or shares your opinion- you'll have a lot less stress in your life!
We were both wrong. The probability of a female child is 33% (I had originally put this and then second-guessed myself). 2 chances of a boy, and one of a girl, therefore 1/(2+1) probability of a girl.
As for the "heritability of intelligence", the jury's still out. None of the studies have provided evidence that heridity is the major factor in producing offspring who will score highly in IQ tests. At best, the relationship as been shown to be 50:50 genetics and environment. This area is plagued by misuse of data and statistics. It has been put forward that genetics is more important than environment, because IQs of related people get more similar as they get older, but the fact is that due to the nature of IQ, everybody's IQ gets more similar with age.
Yes, correlation between IQs of related people tends to be higher than unrelated, but all of these studies look at the IQ of siblings/people of the same generation - I have seen very few that compare IQ of the parent to that of the child. Assuming that because children with the same parents have IQ that correlates (at about 0.4 when reared together) does not imply that their intelligence will correlate to their parents. Genetics is not that simple.
We hardly understand what intelligence is, and yet we're willing to argue genetic factors in its development. Most of these studies depend upon the definition of intelligence as "what intelligence tests measure". It is obvious that two people scoring the same on an intelligence test could do so in different ways. Application of a numerical score to this is too abitrary to allow for significant scientific study - too much information is lost. I am not an ostrich about these studies - I am a psychology student (among other subjects), and I like to think I have an open mind, but that means that I'm not going to just accept something because evidence, when interpreted in a certain way, can suggest it.
Some studies have said that environment causes a "reaction" zone of up to 30 IQ points between related individuals. This doesn't seem like much, but when we realise that 30 is 2 standard deviations in the context of IQ, we realise that it is a massive difference - it could mean the difference between average and top 4 percentiles.
I do not dispute that heridity has some significance in determining IQ, but it not as important as environment.
This assumes that a similar significance would be found if the child was raised away from their genetic parents.Games Workshop Petition
Rather than saying crack babies et al shouldn't be born, better to say they shouldn't even be conceived. ("Shouldn't be born" implies a possible abortion.) I think you are with me on this, since you suggest Norplant for welfare recipients.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
There should be fewer people like *me*. I'm a suburban dweller, and the fact that there are so many people like me has led to terrible urban sprawl. If there were just a few people like me, it wouldn't be a problem.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
No, if all technology were eliminated from the planet tomorrow, the stand-up thing to do would be to work toward re-establishing it.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
As a woman reading this, I have to ask... How many of you spouting your opinions/realdoll jokes/etc. are women?
Just curious.
Something to think about.
I caught this right after I submitted it.
Point one should read: Of course, you could argue that maybe one day, a 90 year old women could be willing and able to give birth and/or raise a child, but chances are that's not going to happen any time soon.
Good point, poor example. How many lines about brains vs genitalia have you heard about women?
Your first didn't explicitly refer to genitalia, but it did say women's reduced brain size = reduced logical capabilities, which is why I posted in the first place. Sure, it was a joke. Just a tacky one.
Good day.
I really don't know the literature in the field; actually, I don't know much more than what filters out into Scientific American and other pop magazines. Still, I had the impression that many of these IQ results were generated in tests on adopted children, controlling for the IQ of the adoptive parents. If I remember right, results show that IQ scores of children resemble the genetic parents more closely than they do adoptive parents. I admit, my memory about this is pretty shady. I'm no social scientist or psychologist, but if I were and found that no study like this had been done, I'd do it. The problem is, nobody likes results that make us feel like genetics have more influence on our behavior than the environment. Even I don't like it, but now that I suspect it's true, I say it's time we get over it.
Collating results by adoptive parents/genetic parents depends on the people themselves telling you who their "real" parents are. The usual method is to group genetic families and adoptive families sparately and compare, rather than comparing adopted children to their genetic parents. Studies that have been carried out in the former manner show there is a closer correlation between genetic parents to their children than adoptive parents to their adoptive children, but this may be effected by the adoption process itelf. Its almost impossible to give conclusive evidence without complete knowledge of the facts, but, unfortunately, due to the obvious privacy concerns, you don't always have all the facts.
Again, I'm not denying that genetics aren't a factor, I'd go further and say they're an important factor, but I think nurture is at least as important as nature.
For once, I find myself pleased with a discussion on /. That doesn't happen often.
Games Workshop Petition
Thanks! Hey, I learned something on Slashdot!
disabling modbombing rocks.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
just doing my part to disable modbombing
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"