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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 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
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
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
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"?
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