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."

Comments

Azi

[silentbozo]

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...

Why nobody talks about adoption

[edremy]

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.

1. A pervasive opinion that adoption is a lesser option: people often ask about the "real" parents. (Hey moron, we change the diapers, we feed him at 2:00AM, he calls us mama and dada. We are the real parents.)
2. 10k TV movies and breathless tabloid stories about adoptions gone bad.
3. Increasing health care coverage for infertility treatments coupled with agressive advertising by for-profit infertility clinics.
4. A culture where biological mothers can either abort or keep the kids with the help of welfare and be accepted, but placing a baby for adoption is regarded as despicable.
5. Some amount of racism. Lots and lots of people want perfect white infants: a lot fewer are willing to take darker kids. Fine by me: we got Adam since some other adoptive family couldn't handle the fact he was 1/2 black.

Adoption works. It's truly sad that so few people understand that.