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Artificial Wombs In the Near Future?
New submitter DaemonDan writes "The first successful pregnancy by IVF was accomplished over 50 years ago, essentially creating a multi-billion dollar industry. Many scientists are trying to take it one step farther with a 100% test tube baby brought to term in an artificial womb. 'Cornell University's Dr. Hung-Ching Liu has engineered endometrial tissues by prompting cells to grow in an artificial uterus. When Liu introduced a mouse embryo into the lab-created uterine lining, "It successfully implanted and grew healthy," she said in this New Atlantis Magazine article. Scientists predict the research could produce an animal womb by 2020, and a human model by early 2030s.' The author of the article seems to believe that birth via artificial wombs could become the new norm, but is it really feasible, desirable or even affordable for the majority of Earth's population?"
As long as they don't all have the surname "Fett"...
"Artificial Womb" sounds so awkward. How about axlotl tank?
Get off my lawn.
Is there a baby shortage we should be concerned about?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Forget the artificial womb, who's working on an artificial vagina?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
My first born son has been in the hospital for the last three months. He was born a little early. Let's just say that I'm open to the idea of not going through that again.
Oh brave new world, that has such people in it.
Should we use these to decant Alphas or Epsilon semi-morons?
If a government wants to prohibit abortion, they can just require that she give up her embryo or fetus for adoption when she terminates the pregnancy, with the state picking up the tab over and above the cost of an abortion.
This assumes, of course, that removing the embryo or fetus in a way that allows transplant to an artificial womb doesn't put the mother at a greater health risk than an abortion.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Born in a test tube.
Nurtured in a plastic womb.
Raised by a telescreen.
Now another soldier for democracy, freedom and the American way...
Consider, female is pregnant & wants to abort her fetus, but the male sues to have custody of the fetus turned over to him since he can implant it into an artificial womb..
In a society where pregnancy can occur entirely outside of the human body, what will happen for abortion rights, custody disputes, etc.
All kinds of social, ethical and legal landmines waiting in that Pandora's box.
Really? Artificial wombs, FFS? Look around you, Dr. Fertility. The natural wombs are pumping out product at a terrifyingly prodigious rate with no help from you. Maybe you can work on some other organ that we maybe need to stay alive or something?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
No, they could. But Apple had all the design patents on them
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Your argument is a few decades late. Instead of having a surrogate mother carry the child to term now a tank "carries" the child to term.
Uterine replicators were pretty central to the start of Bujold's series in '86 with one of her first Hugo's coming out of that initial plot. She's examined their impact from a few different angles over the years - although it's just background or a side line in many of the Vorkosigan novels. I'd say she gave it a far better treatment than Herbert (though he certainly got there first) who only ever managed to share a Hugo let alone win the four Bujold's got. Actually, I think I liked the collaborative work of his son with Anderson a bit more than most of the original Dune books (barring Dune itself), although their work is probably best accompanied by a SSRI.
One of the things I appreciate about SF is not just the imagination of the future as much as exploring the ethics and social implications of where we might end up.
But of course, if we grow humans in an artificial womb, they wouldn't really alive until we take them out at the end of the 9-month procedure, right?
If you are referring to abortion poltics, the term you are looking for is "legal person."
There is no question that a zygote is biologically human and biologically alive.
Legal person-hood is another matter. This is granted - and taken away - by the common consensus of society or in some cases, the edict of a government or dictator that doesn't reflect the consensus of society. Even ignoring "artificial legal persons" like corporations, a society can grant legal personhood - the state of having the rights of a living person - on sufficiently-intelligent animals or non-earth-originated sentient aliens or even sentient human-created life forms (e.g. computer programs, androids, etc.) if it wants to. If it wants to, it can also take away or deny the personhood of living humans who are too young (e.g. not born yet, or not old enough to be more self-aware than non-human animals), or severely mentally retarded or severely brain-damaged. We can also take away personhood by declaring someone dead even if they are still breathing. Most Western countries do this today when they declare someone "brain dead" if their autonomic systems are working but there is no other brain function.
By the way, I am NOT advocating denying anyone who has already been born the status of "person" for reasons of mental or physical incapacity short of brain death. If the society I live in makes this a common practice, I'll probably move.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
By the time you "make" the clones, raise them, educate them, train them, the cost would be astronomical for an army or any worthwhile force. Plus, new soldiers would be at least 16 years out, to be generous.
Meanwhile you can crank out robots by the truckload for a fraction of the cost. They have much simpler logistical requirements in terms of food, housing, and other amenities. More durable, better endurance, can be repaired. We're a lot closer to robot soldiers than clone soldiers too.
=Smidge=
A Womb with a view.
I hope this caused some synapses to fire.
We humans have moved most of our digestive system into technology, why not this too?
I'm not sure what restaurants you eat out at, but remind me never to have dinner at your place.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Still, even Bujold is fairly recent. Personally I suspect that if men were the ones getting pregnant we'd have had da Vinci making designs for uterine replicators and the Germans would have perfected them in the 30's.
It will be interesting to see how the debate goes when they start being used, particularly as cosmetic and convenience reasons are likely to be significant drivers. I'm certain some groups will find (or make up) a lot of reasons to oppose them, despite the many and obvious advantages.
I suspect that if men were getting pregnant, they would be women.
A major reason that women didn't do these things and were in the position they were is precisely because of childbearing and raising being an expensive proposition. If men were bearing children, they'd be in the same boat. Men had the duty of going out and ranging either to hunt or fight. This also had the advantage of exposing them to other ideas from over the hill.
There is no compelling contextual evidence for the age or gender of the original poster. For all we know, sexconker might very well be a young girl with a geeky streak who happens to like gourmet ice cream and pretty boys with good pipes. I sang baritone in school. An i've been told i clean up well. Anyone in SF bay area interested in starting an a Capella group? We can call ourselves "Super Cache", or maybe go with "Beowulf". What kind of name is likely to attract the attention of the geek girl among /.ers? I know! "The GNU Directions"!
========== "Hello World" in my programming language of choice: ATG - LET THERE BE LIFE - TAG ==========
First successful *human* IVF.
The first successful IVF pregnancy & birth was in 1959 - a team at the Worcester Foundation, lead by Dr. Min Chueh Chang, successfully gave birth to a rabbit.
Well, OK, they didn't give birth to a rabbit per se - obviously another rabbit did - but they certainly had a hand in it, as it were...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
Why? Is there seriously a need to come up with new methods other than good old fashioned fucking?
I don't think many people have a problem with the fucking, but rather with the subsequent 9-ish months of issues.
9 months? More like 18+ years. And that assumes said child moves away to college right after high school, gets a good job right out of college, etc.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Is there seriously a need to come up with new methods other than good old fashioned fucking?
No - if you consider humanity only as a homogeneous mass of animal flesh.
As someone married to a mother, let me give an alternative view : Yes, definitely. Ever witnessed a birth, even with an epidural ? Or just stood in the same building of the hospital maternity ward ? Every 10 babies or so you will hear the screams. While many young women, and most men have this romanticized notion of birth (for obvious reasons), but you'll find a much different view among women who've already given birth.
On another note...when asking "why"....is it like we have some type of population problems? Not enough people being born?
No, it's because individuals have this crazy instinct to fulfil their biological urges by propagating their DNA.
Actually yes, we do. The human birthrate is falling worldwide, right now still heading to overpopulation in the short term, as the total number of young people is still increasing (the number of babies is very close to stagnation, and will soon start to drop though). However, if the decreasing fertility trends spread around the globe (and they are), once we hit ~2055, the number of humans alive will fall off a cliff, which will not be a desirable outcome at all. A little before that, so many people will become pensioners it won't be funny at all. It won't be localized anywhere, it'll be global. Think recession, but with no cheap mexicans/asians/africans to import at all, and every country having the exact same problem.
Regardless of how far robotics will be along at the time (and there's always the chance it won't be far enough along at all), do you really think having a country's population drop by ~8% per year for 2 decades will lead to stable countries ?
So it would be very prudent to start breeding humans, which imho is only unethical if they are somehow treated as inferior to the rest of us, in 10-15 years in relatively large numbers (hundreds of thousands a year). We can still let the total population drop, but slowly, in a way that countries, nations and we ourselves might actually survive.
Kneel before Zod! Now, lay down before Zod. Now using your lower abdominals, raise your legs and hold on a five count before Zod! One before Zod! Two before Zod!
Taking this question entirely seriously for a moment and assuming you were too.
IVF is popular because something like 1 in 7 couples have difficulty conceiving naturally. Even having managed to conceive something like 70-80% of conceptions fail to result in a viable pregnancy because they don't attach properly to the uterine lining. It's part of the reason that even women who aren't on birth control don't have a pregnancy every month they are 'fertile' and have sex.
Potentially the use of artificial wombs would reduce the instance of miscarriage and improve the success rates of IVF beyond what is currently normal. There are plenty of people out there who would like to have children for whom 'good old fashioned fucking' isn't a viable solution.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World