Slashdot Mirror
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."
Why don't these researchers dedicate their energies to producing better contraceptives ?
We seem to live in a crazy world!
Since Saddam Hussain is a Muslim, and this is clearly an Un-Islamic idea, it is unlikely this will become reality any time soon.
More likely is that the USA will breed an army of expendable super-patriotic clones to go out into the rest of the world and spread the word about the fantastic US way of life.
And if anyone disagrees they get shot :-)
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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?
Ok. I tried not to get pissed off... Didn't work. Not even thinking happy thoughts about the new computer I get to build soon worked.
Number one: I am deaf, it has NOTHING to do with my genes and I fully intend on procreating once I find a suitable life-partner to do so with.
Number two: If a couple, or woman, or man can take care of a child they should be permitted to procreate if they like. It's those who cannot take care of their offspring that should not be permitted to.
Number three: You assume that genes have everything to do with everything. My deafness is a far cry from being related to genetics, and so might peoples sterility, blindness, stupidity, and ugliness.
Number four: This is slashdot, I think we are all far beyond merely "depending" on technology. I can probably safely bet that 9/10ths of us would commit suicide if technology were eliminated from the planet tomorrow. (This is a safe bet because I'd probably be the first to go.)
There are enough LOGICAL reasons to argue against this without pushing buttons. ie:
1- Impact on the offspring-- The subtle shifting of hormonal balances, nutrients, etc. in the natural womb cannot be duplicated exactly. What will the impact on the offspring be mentally, physically, and emotionally?
2- Human bonding- The bonding process begins in the womb. We might end up with a whole generation of children who are emotionally and mentally like the monkey in the experiment with the wire and "fur" surrogate mothers.
3- Potential of mass-producing human life for slavery, medical experiments, or the like. Do we really want to open the doors to this possibility?
Screw evolution. Do you really think that anything going on today allows evolution? Miracle drugs and antibiotics to curb infection, breast implants to attract males, CPR to save lives, the internet to allow the meeting of geeks who would never otherwise venture outside even if it meant never reproducing... We're far beyond evolution at this point. Now all we can *really* do is sit back and watch the world fall apart or come together whatever the case might be.
-Sara
Medical equipment has no standing in Family Court, no judge is going to give custody of a child to a glorified toaster. --Dave
So as far as I can remember, this is the first time this has been done. I can remember mention of people thinking it ludicrous to put a human on the moon, even after assorted animals had been put into orbit. Closer to current times, who would have thought processor speeds could have gone to what they are now, working on line sizes of 0.13 micron? If you said something like this to someone 10 years ago, they would have laughed at you.
I think this whole artificial womb thing is scary. An lab-created womb with attached fetus can be much easily monitored and controlled than an expecting mother, so the whole issue of antibodies and nutrients would be controlled much better than a mother watching what she eats and drinks and how much adverse environmental things she exposes herself to. It's amazing that this has happened, and quite frankly, it scares the shit out of me.
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!
That's the least of the problems. Embryology is fantastically complicated. There are numerous things that we just don't understand. For example, in many species, hormones dictate which end of the embryo is which. So that the stem cells destined for the head migrate to the correct place, and the stem cells destined for the tail migrate elsewhere. If we have similar (or much much more complex) systems, then we might be able to approximate them, but we'll never know how well we've done. We could discover that we had improperly measured out the amount of hormones necesary to give the XY fetus male genitals. And we might only discover our mistake when none of these males could produce sperm.
Embryology is 100% as complicated as all of human evolution. Every peice of genetic code is only functional in the context of the mother's womb.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
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
It isn't, much, but there are a lot of people who have ethical concerns about that too. I won't argue those here (I actually am rather apathetic about the surrogate mother issue) but your first comment actually illustrates the point of those who hold the opposing view.
There is also the somewhat frightening idea of someone running amok with these things, and creating some sort of slave class of person to run things. read Brave New World. People were engineered to belong to different classes. More likely I see someplace using mass produced people as a menial labor force. It sounds like some sort of bad SciFi, but I can still see it happening.
At least using surrogate mothers requires someone else to go through 9 months of serious discomfort and moderate threat to life (as all childbirth does), making it far more difficult to do something like this.
How is this different from a different organ - the kidney - being replaced with external machinery (dialysis)?
Once again, it isn't, much. The problem is that dialysis is usually used in one of two situations.
Few people spend large amounts of their lives on dialysis. It can keep you alive, but is painful, unplesant, work intensive, and doesn't work as well as the real thing. If a kidney doesn't work as well, your health is poor. If a womb doesn't work as well, you could end up with all sorts of interesting physical and mental problems. In this instance we are not talking about preserving life, we are talking about creating it. There are ethical concers about dabbling with such things when we don't understand them.
How is this different from the prosthetic limbs or the artifical hearts in development?
It is many orders of magnitude more complex than prosthetic limbs or artificial hearts. The ethical concern comes from creating human life in this manner. Would it really be fair to create a life that society will have no choice but to institutionalize in some manner?
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.
Yes we can work around some things, but an artifical heart, kidney or limb doesn't work quite as well as the original. There are inevitably problems. If someone needs a leg, they effect themselves. Creating a womb however also affects the life of the person being 'born?'.
The other problem (as I cited above) is that genetic material is extremely easy to obtain. It isn't particularly difficult to harvest eggs from women. This is done for invitrio(sp?) fertilization. For men, it is even easier, and we all know how it's done.
With just a little work it would be possible to create vast numbers of offspring. How these offspring would be used is one of the major ethical questions. Even in this century, there are countries that have no problem whatsoever with slavery. Would those same countries have a problem with creating some sort of easy labor force? OK, I honestly can't say I see China doing this. One of the reasons they have slavery relates to their overpopulation problem. This would compound it. Still it could be a fairly cheap and constant labor source.
All this aside, I really don't see it as too bad. The potential for abuse is great, but all technology can be abused in some manner. This could allow women who can not carry a child to term to have a child without the problems involved in using a surrogate (some of the legal complications alone are epic).
I would suggest strongly trying this with various animals and getting several completely normal animals (including primates) before ever attempting this on a human.
Even then, there will be legitimate ethical questions, but I leave most of those for someone else.
There is a civil war coming in the United States. Remember which side has most of the guns
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.
This can be summed up very easy. Power corrupts. Doesn't matter if its religious, political, or charisma. Power corrupts all it touches.
Am I lying when I tell you that im telling the truth? Or am I telling the truth when I say that Im lying?
Truly, if we could insure that most children could survive with the aid of someone other than the mother from a few weeks after conception, that would have tremendous moral implications. Mothers might actually have the unexpected equality of not being able to be the final decision maker on having a child. This, along with cloning, really could be a big deal socially.
Logic ... merely enables one to be wrong with authority. -- Doctor Who
I can't remember who said it now, but I remember someone said that the Roe v Wade decision was on a collision course with science. The rather arbitrary trimester standard that the courts set up in this decision was based on viability outside of the womb with the technology and science available back then. Things have steadily improved, and even without this aritficial womb, a fetus can be viable much earlier on than it was 29 years ago. This artificial womb just further muddies the water.
Note: This is not an anti-abortion post. I am simply speaking here to the judicial policymaking that was done by the Supreme Court in Roe v Wade.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball(TM)
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?
What if this technology provided a way for such a fetus to survive outside of the mother? What if abortions no longer killed the fetus, but simply transported it from the mother's womb into an artificial womb in some lab?
Now the ethics have all changed. Pro-life supports can argue that Yes, the fetus can survive outside the mother, refuting the original pro-choice argument. And now the pro-choice supporters would have an alternative to destroying the fetus which they could argue is ethical. Then the other side would argue that it is unethical to abandon the baby, etc. It could go on and on...
The other ethical dilemma could come from mothers not wanting to go through 9 months of pregnancy if they could just stick the embryo in an articifial womb. It would be the easy-way-out. Who knows how the baby would turn out from one of these things, totally un-stimulated. What are the ethics of experimenting with such procedures?
So, YES there are ethical concerns.
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 ----
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.
The whole idea of trimesters is a superficial one. To not grant basic human rights based on an arbitrary distinction such as skin color, sex, and sexual orientation has already shown to be unethical and intolerable in civilized societies. Roe V Wade objectifies and dehumanizes the unborn to the point where they can pass laws that supercede the very basic right to life. Any law, dogma, dictum that relies on dehumanizing one person so another is fit to judge them by making them appear more ethically or morally superior is bankrupt on principle.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
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.
To "use" a normal offspring would be unthinkable.
It is very thinkable. It happens all the time in all parts of the world, and has happened throughout history.
China Currently allows slavery.
The United States allowed slavery officially until the end of the Civil War, but legal slavery existed in form if not in name at least until World War II. Illegal slavery exists even now within the United States.
The U.S. wasn't the first to have slavery however. Where did we learn to keep slaves? From our European cultural forefathers. Where did we get our slaves? Some would have you belive that we raided African villages for slaves, but in reality less than 1% came from raids. We bought them from costal villages who knew they had a good thing going, and raided inner villages for capitol to sell.
When looking back, it is difficult to find any culture that never in it's geneology allowed slavery. In western culture, some of the earliest documents we have reference slavery. The Bible (belive or not, most scholars agree that at least the surrounding context, if not the specifics, is reasonably accurate) references slavery.
If we are so willing to use other natural people as slaves, how is it so hard to see that humans are willing to do so with those who might be practically engineered to do so?
They shouldn't be used, period, and to raise the question is to expose us to a very slippery slope.
Onec again, from an ethical standpoint, you are right, but from a realistic standpoint, many ethical concers are unfortunatly not considered.
I was going to argue that we ahve always been exposed to that slippery slope, but that isn't quite right. It has only been rather recently (from a human history perspective) that we actually have been exposed to that slope. We exposed ourselves to that slope as soon as we tried to climb it. Before that we didn't worry about it because nobody had ever really considered a world without slavery. Nobody had ever considered the cause of human rights.
Sure everyone knew that being a slave sucked, but that's the way things were. Anything else was unthinkable.
We are now standing part way up that very slippery slope, not on the edge of it. We are making good progress climbig it, and I hope we continue to do so, but to close our eyes to how something might be abused is dangerous.
On the other hand, thinking about how someone with no ethical sense might think gives us insight into how someone might abuse the situation. We then apply ethics to defend against such people.
Your ethical viewpoint is admirable. Many others (particularly those with power) will not share it. They will try to do things like this, and unless some warnings can be given, they will do it before anyone really realizes what's going on. Then it will be to late.
There is a civil war coming in the United States. Remember which side has most of the guns