An Artificial Womb Successfully Grew Baby Sheep -- and Humans Could Be Next (theverge.com) 188
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Inside what look like oversized ziplock bags strewn with tubes of blood and fluid, eight fetal lambs continued to develop -- much like they would have inside their mothers. Over four weeks, their lungs and brains grew, they sprouted wool, opened their eyes, wriggled around, and learned to swallow, according to a new study that takes the first step toward an artificial womb. One day, this device could help to bring premature human babies to term outside the uterus -- but right now, it has only been tested on sheep. The Biobag may not look much like a womb, but it contains the same key parts: a clear plastic bag that encloses the fetal lamb and protects it from the outside world, like the uterus would; an electrolyte solution that bathes the lamb similarly to the amniotic fluid in the uterus; and a way for the fetus to circulate its blood and exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen. Flake and his colleagues published their results today in the journal Nature Communications.
Axolotl Tanks! (Score:1)
Re: Axolotl Tanks! (Score:2, Informative)
Those tanks were the exact opposite of those artifical wombs though.
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yes once the demand is so great that when the butlerian jihad happens the demand must result in the creation of Axolotl tanks... a bit of a stretch but i like where this is going.
Brave New World (Score:5, Insightful)
too many implications.
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Quiet, or I'll put alcohol in your blood surrogate.
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It's hard to have a smug sense of superiority over an automatic elevator.
One of the themes of the book was that people already had too much free time - kids were deliberately brainwashed into being more wasteful so that other people had a purpose. And what would efficiency gain you? Money?
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It's hard to have a smug sense of superiority over an automatic elevator.
One of the themes of the book was that people already had too much free time - kids were deliberately brainwashed into being more wasteful so that other people had a purpose. And what would efficiency gain you? Money?
We often try to make dystopian worlds in science fiction novels into some sort of prediction of the world of the future. The Brave New World universe runs completely counter to what is happening now. Today's world is looking toward eliminating humanity, not employing it.
A robot is a lot easier to build and fix, and elevator attendents who orgasm when they get to the rooof still have to be paid somehow. And paying a person, be they alpha or delta, is frowned upon today.
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We often try to make dystopian worlds in science fiction novels into some sort of prediction of the world of the future.
Right, even though most are either fantasies or explorations of human nature in general - in this case what would we do if we wanted everything as safe and stable and shallowly 'happy' as possible, with immense power over the minds of other people?
The Brave New World universe runs completely counter to what is happening now.
Even if we believed that this exact society was possible, we haven't had the prerequisite events.
A robot is a lot easier to build and fix, and elevator attendents who orgasm when they get to the rooof still have to be paid somehow.
But that's not the point, either of the elevator operator, or of the Fordists in general. They want a 'happy' population, and a guy who's thrilled by his job is exactl
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Might I suggest you read the cliffs notes for "Brave New World" instead?
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Babies being born artificially wasn't the only problem, but it was the enabler for the other problems.
Yay for Men's rights... and other possibilities (Score:5, Interesting)
Since many women feel free to just go to a sperm bank and have a child without a "father" [through artificial insemination], men will eventually be able to go to an egg bank and have a child without a "mother" [by renting an artificial womb].
Of course that is not the primary drive behind the development, but there are so many possibilities. Women with hysterectomies banking eggs to have children later without the risk and complexity of a surrogate. Husbands having children from eggs extracted from their dead or dying wife. Gay couples having children without involving any women. Old couples changing their mind about having children (as long as they planned ahead). "Professional" women who don't want to ruin their jobs or be inconvenienced. Attractive women who don't want to ruin their figures. Governments producing children using extracted DNA.
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Just be pragmatic, there are lots of medical conditions that can cause women to be unable to conceive or unable to carry a child to term. Infertility is already treated for to attempt to counteract these conditions but there are still conditions that are not effective.
This kind of procedure can be used to allow women that suffer from these kinds of conditions to have children. It can allow women that work in risky occupations to have healthy children. It could even allow women that have health issues unr
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I still try to understand for what reason should genetic faults be artificially reproduced on purpose, for no other reason than to feed the ego of the holder of those defective genes. If you are genetically incapable of producing children why should you genes be pushed onto the next generation, who in turn will be genetically incapable of producing children but then ego must be served in a society based around narcissism from the top.
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It's very simple. Not all reproductive faults are genetic in origin. Some are due to injury, some are due to medications that the person's own mother took prior-to or during pregnancy. Some are due to environmental factors.
Additionally not all genetic faults are passed-on either. There are already ways to test in-utero for faults. Among them is a test called Progenity that allows one to screen for Trisomy and a whole slew of other conditions, where the only sampling needed is a blood-draw from the moth
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Except where the surrogate does not want to give-up the child they've carried. Or when the surrogate has a poor diet that affects the child. Or where the surrogate has injury, or illness, etc.
Laws governing surrogacy are not consistent from state to state either, so it's certainly possible that a surrogate might move from a state where the law favors the genetic contributors, to where the surrogate is favored, so even strongly worded contracts might not help.
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Feminists will resist this, because it will reduce their bargaining power.
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There is no such real thing as "Feminazi" - the radical feminists are more like Stalinists: fantasies of pogroms (see: Julie Bindel) against the "other" (men) and dissidents in their own ranks (such as women who decide to be homemakers). Really, they're like Conservatives, who are in turn just like them. See: Horseshoe Theory.
Some feminists welcome artificial wombs because it frees women from the expectation of childbirth.
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Those 'feminazis' do exist. They are just vanishingly small in number. Numbers don't matter in an attention economy - it's very convenient for opponents of feminism to just pick down the most extreme man-hating feminazi they can find, point a finger and shout 'see, this is what we fight against!' Dishonest, but effective.
Yay for women's rights, too (Score:3)
Imagine future generations of womankind growing up in a world where women are no longer needed for making children except for their eggs. This is a first step toward that. And that's not the end of the world for women. It's more like the end of the beginning.
Look at how dishwashers and vacuum cleaners worked out - did women think that was the end of the world because so-called "women's work" was in part automated? Noep, noep, and absolutely noep, it freed women to do other things. Patriarchal boneheads at t
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The artificial womb will free women from the expectation of motherhood in order to perpetuate the species. markdavis's remark about women being able to build up their professional life without worrying about missing out on motherhood will be just the first symptom of this liberating technology.
That is only the case if your definition of motherhood begins at conception and ends at delivery. Your life as a parent is just starting at that moment. If you asked my wife, she will definitely say she is more comfortable now, but in terms of time, energy, and resources, our kids definitely consume more of all three outside the womb than in it.
You could envision some far future society where sperm and egg are decanted from banks, brought to term in artificial wombs, and raised in creches to adulthood by
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FWIW there's already work in progress towards taking a skin cell (a *live* skin cell, not one from the surface) and converting it into a root stem cell. And lots of work on taking that stem cell and causing it to develop into any particular kind of cell desired. In this case that would be an oocyte. Then there will need to be work done on maturing and supporting that oocyte, but that's probably not major considering what's already been done. And sperm is even easier.
So there won't be a need for either m
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Scientists have recently also had breakthroughs on the other side of things, keeping embryos alive from IVF longer without implanting them [sciencemag.org], but that was pushing it forward a matter of days, not say into the second trimester.
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or providing alternatives to abortion.
You mean like lobbying to have birth control coverage mandated for all women and providing free birth control to women to prevent unwanted pregnancies? Yeah, that is nice of them to do.
/sarcasm. You make this far too easy.
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Let me slightly correct your statement:
in the US as well, with a number of mentally ill and other officially disapproved of people being sterilized.
Retrospective studies show a lot of "mistakes" in classification.
In related news... (Score:5, Funny)
Veal is about to get a whole lot fresher! ;)
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If I hadn't commented on this thread, I SO would have been modding you up for that.
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Apparently, it will sous vide.
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Veal is about to get a whole lot fresher! ;)
Oh, Veally?
This is excellent news! (Score:4, Insightful)
I have no doubt that in countries where abortion is legal, right-to-lifers will be lining up to crowd-fund this research, and to pay for women who would otherwise have an abortion to pop their fetuses into these artificial wombs and brought to term.
And then, of course, they will act boldly to ensure that the fetuses are adopted into loving families...perhaps even their own!
Yeah, right.
Re:This is excellent news! (Score:5, Informative)
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Isn't it astonishing that the RTL'ers haven't been lobbying to streamline those regulations!
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If it doesn't take a year of red tape, and $25k, then the *shock* plebeians could adopt! Won't someone please think of the children?!
Seriously though, eliminating the requirement that a couple must be married in order to adopt is a regulation the family-values GOP will never strike down.
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Just noticed you said RTL and not GOP. Oh well, there's enough overlap that it's close enough.
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What state are you in? I live in Virginia and I know a couple single people that have been allowed to adopt. I know more that have been foster parents.
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And unofficially, amongst conservatives, the marriage in question had better include two (and only two) people, and there had better be one from each of the traditional two sexes, or the application is going to encounter a lot of unfortunate "accidental" difficulties.
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No one cares about Right To Life. What people are is "pro birth". If they cared about RTL then there wouldn't be complaints about life saving abortions.
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If they really cared about eliminating abortion, they'd be embracing contraception for everyone. Instead most of the organisations that oppose abortion also lobby against contraceptive education programs, against mandatory insurance coverage, and against government-provided or -subsidised contraception for the low income.
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Once the fetus transition into actual infancy by emerging from the womb, they couldn't care less what happens to it.
gay couples (Score:2)
I have no doubt that in countries where abortion is legal, right-to-lifers will be lining up to crowd-fund this research, and to pay for women who would otherwise have an abortion to pop their fetuses into these artificial wombs and brought to term.
And then, of course, they will act boldly to ensure that the fetuses are adopted into loving families...perhaps even their own!
Yeah, right.
OTH, the same people will lose their shit when they realize gay and lesbian couples will be able to have their own babies in a buy-an-egg-or-sperm kind of a thing. This will fundamentally change the nature of reproduction (and thus marriage). And then the Anti-Christ will come or something. Oh, I can see the shows in the 700 Club.
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This is hardly surprising, considering how many conservatives find it necessary to acquire a "beard" in order to stay convincingly in the closet.
And what better way to brainwash a helpless child into fundamentalism than to get hold of them when they're too young to think for themselves.
Begs the question (Score:5, Funny)
*Should* humans be used to bring sheep fetuses to term, or should they continue using the artificial wombs?
Natural or Coordinator? (Score:2)
Soylent Yean... (Score:1)
"The ocean's dying. Plankton's dying. It's sheeple! Soylent Yean is made out of sheeple!!!"
Immunity (Score:4, Insightful)
If they're going to spend their brief lives in a steel box before being prepped for someone else's dinner, I guess an immune system doesn't matter that much.
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Since this is the final stage instead of the entire term it's possible that step has been passed. If not it's another of many problems to be solved.
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It's my understanding that the immunity transfer mainly happens in the later stages, and much of it even post-natal (via suckling). So much of it is already being frequently bypassed with sub-optimal results. But kids usually survive.
That said, this would appear to worsen the situation, so it does appear to be another problem to be solved.
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But I'd prefer to look at it as the next step towards an artificial womb that can raise an oocyte to an infant. Your view is more accurate for the current version, but the developmental vector is towards the other view. If we're guessing future consequences, then the current version is less important than the fully developed version. Of course, if one is trying to guess the timeline, then a current accurate measurement is more important...but I suspect that even were I to read the original article they'd
Alien human farming... (Score:2)
Abortion (Score:3)
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Yes, no, and maybe.
If your support for abortion is purely about a woman's right to make decisions about her body, then yes.
If your objection to abortion is based on the view that a fetus, at whatever arbitrary stage, is a human then I expect it wouldn't change anything for you.
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We abuse human life to bring you coffee and chocolate. In comparison to these, allowing a woman (and a man) to control their future, is much more important.
Please please tell me... (Score:4, Funny)
Then it would be a womb with a view.
An Artificial Womb Successfully Grew Baby Sheep -- (Score:5, Informative)
Jeez, get a grip - and READ THE ARTICLE.
The apparatus did NOT 'grow' a sheep, it merely kept a premature sheep embryo alive long enough to separate it from the device, and then have it submitted to the knife of the 'scientists' so they could evaluate the effectiveness of the artificial womb.
OK, I am NOT anti-science, and I really do appreciate the accomplishments of this endeavor - - - therefore there is NO reason to blow the accomplishments out of proportion.
THIS 'device' is being put forward as a means to extend the viability of really early premature birth infants so they actually have a chance to survive - - - and NOT as an ARTIFICIAL WOMB with the ability to actually grow an infant from sperm-egg inception to birth.
cheers . . .
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This artificial womb will save millions of lives each year and prevent millions more from suffering disabilities caused by premature birth.
Your numbers seemed high, so I looked it up [who.int].
Preterm birth complications are the leading cause of death among children under 5 years of age, responsible for nearly 1 million deaths in 2015.
Three-quarters of them could be saved with current, cost-effective interventions.
So if current, cost-effective interventions were applied we'd have about a quarter-million lives lost that could potentially be helped by this new technology.
Assuming it would be even more expensive than existing interventions, it would be available in an even smaller percentage of cases than those. But let's say it was equally available. That means ~62,500 lives saved.
It's just a first step. It doesn't need to be a miracle to be worth doing.
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My figures were taken from an article on the device
Fake news!
Sorry, habit. :-)
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THIS 'device' is being put forward as a means to extend the viability of really early premature birth infants so they actually have a chance to survive - - - and NOT as an ARTIFICIAL WOMB with the ability to actually grow an infant from sperm-egg inception to birth.
True, but that doesn't mean it won't eventually become an artificial womb. If they're successful at using it to keep babies who are 15 weeks premature alive and healthy through their full development, then clearly the next step is to use it for babies who are 16 weeks premature, etc., etc. As they push back the age of viability new challenges will arise and be solved, and step by step it will get pushed back all the way to starting from an embryo. The development process will take years, maybe decades, but
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wow! Thanks for all the kind remarks.
Yes, I know this is /. and reading the article is not required to post in this arena.
However, I still support my original point that this is NOT the headline-grabbing Artificial Womb.
It IS a means of providing extended womb-like support for really early premature births, and should be lauded as a serious accomplishment in it's own merits, as it provides a MUCH better option than a premature birth installed in an oxygenated tank for 'hopeful' completion of the embryo's
I am not ready for sheep-borne people (Score:2)
Do sheep-people dream of electronic androids?
I don't know about you ... (Score:2)
... but I find this effing creepy.
Dr. Flake (Score:2)
Gender war is inevitable now (Score:2)
Premature birth is terrifying. (Score:2)
Humans might be next? (Score:2)
Baby sheep born in artificial womb and humans might be next?
Why would we use humans to give birth to baby sheep if we've already got an artificial womb to do that?
Stop. (Score:2)
There are already too many people.
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We are all just bags of water with drives to make more bags of water. Who are you to dictate to override the be fruitful and multiply biblical directive?
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Yet still, scientific evidence would go a long way in supporting your position. And just how has the quality of life degraded for the poorest among us?
Re: Do we really need more people? (Score:1)
Who are you to dictate to others to ignore a biological imperative? You sound like all those scientists who thought eugenics was going to be awesome.
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Re:Do we really need more people? (Score:5, Insightful)
In most wealthy countries, kids are a liability because you have to feed, clothe, and shelter them without them delivering any kind of return on investment. In poor countries they tend to be an asset because they end up being extra farm hands, laborers, etc.
Having kids in western countries is thus a luxury, whereas in places like Africa it's a necessity.
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"In most wealthy countries, kids are a liability..."
Not quite. In wealthy countries, the One Percent need us to have more kids. When 500,000,000 hungry people are fighting over 100,000,000 jobs, we won't have the time or energy to start a revolution against the rich and powerful.
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"In most wealthy countries, kids are a liability..."
Not quite. In wealthy countries, the One Percent need us to have more kids.
That's not working very well. A lot of men are opting out of the reproduction game.
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In most wealthy countries, kids are a liability because you have to feed, clothe, and shelter them without them delivering any kind of return on investment.
Don't forget that child support, because when the wife decides she isn't fulfilled, you have to support the larvae until they are in their 20's.
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I work with children professionally.
Larvae is a fitting insult.
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If you hate them so much, why do you work with children? Why not seek another profession?
Probably wants to feed his or her family. I worked with college students almost my entire career, and after working with millennials, I wasn't too fond of them either. But I liked my paycheck.
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In most wealthy countries, kids are a liability because you have to feed, clothe, and shelter them without them delivering any kind of return on investment. In poor countries they tend to be an asset because they end up being extra farm hands, laborers, etc.
The value of child labor is quite modest, they work at slave labor rates. The primary reason to have kids is to have them support you economically and otherwise when you're elderly and they are young adults because being old and childless is harsh in many poorly developed societies. High risk of child death leads to "insurance", 95% of the women have an extra child because 5% of them will die. Losing a child is of course always a tragedy, but in the western world you'll still get to live at a decent nursing
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1. Saving prematures whose parents already have decided they want it.
2. Birth control in underdeveloped countries.
We are not the people to dismiss the child wish of people under 1.
We can act on 2. however, as for instance Bill Gates is already doing with his famous [goodreads.com]:
“The world today has 6.8 billion people. That's heading up to about nine billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care & reproductive health services, we could LOWER that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.”
By the way, scare mongering isn't really necessary, as Hans Rosling argues [farnamstreetblog.com] that
In developed countries, a ratio near 2 parents to 2 children mostly exists and developing nations are getting closer and closer as their childhood health outcomes continue to improve.
which brings him to the conclusion that
Population growth should hit a limit around 11 billion within the next hundred years, as the world equalizes in health outcomes.
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We all might be living equally, but equally might me we are all living very poorly. Most of these blue sky ideas assume that everyone will be somehow living the high life.
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1. Saving prematures whose parents already have decided they want it.
If the treatment proves effective, then it should become a required treatment, when the kid's life can be saved; Also, if a mother wants to abort her pregnancy early, because of her right to choose what happens with her body, then this treatment should also be mandatory to attempt to save the life of the kid --- If effective, then her offspring can survive, even if she decides to stop being pregnant. Conflicting rights dilemma r
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The populations in Africa and the Middle East have far exceeded the available resources in those regions, and they're now heavily dependent on handouts from Western nations. There's no sign of the reproduction rates slowing down in those regions, either.
You must be a trump voter, because you're bringing up a lot of alternative facts. Developing nations are becoming less dependent on the west. [businessinsider.com] And the birth rate is in fact slowing down in all areas [wikimedia.org]
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And anyways isn't it a Progressive stance to bleat on about how there's too many undesirable people in the world and how to fix it?
No, and definitely not when it's thinly veiled "Brown people are to blame!" We are interested in fixing issues with the world, we're just uninterested in trying to claim it's all a massive moral failing on someone's part and make ourselves feel superior for it.
And you should realize that unlike the right, it's not a religion with us. If a key liberal position were there's too much babies and we need to stop trying to save lives, I'd be firmly opposed to that but would still be a liberal.
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Conservatives, ar least in the American form, do not care what color your skin is.
What's scary is that you actually believe this despite an abundance of scientific studies showing otherwise. Is there any way to disabuse you of this notion? How many peer-reviewed papers would it take to convince you that no, conservatives, liberals, apathetics, me, and you do in fact let race bias us?
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"Progressives" is rather broad - the CPUSA never held that position and one leading female member famously got herself arrested for dancing with a black man on the first of may. Not really the sign of a party prepared to sterilize black folks. Of course, once Stalinism took hold things went downhill rather fast.
But yeah, social democracy has much to answer for in this area. They never had the excuse of Stalinism, they got their all on their own.
Overpopulation isn't a real problem (Score:2)
India in fact is part of that steep decline, as you can see in the per-country breakdown. On average the "Middle East & North Africa" has also seen a moderate reduction over the last 50 years, from 2.7 to 1.8, while the "Arab World" has gone from 2.7 to 2.0. The only region with a generally upward trend over that time is "Sub-Saharan Africa", and even that has started to level o
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Nothing like using good old hard economics to achieve a desired outcome eh.
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Probably like mutton. Given that it's sheep and all.
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Remember, the only difference between incubation and sous vide is final temperature...
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No, actually it's the solution to the abortion false dichotomy. And this isn't by any means the first story on the subject. A team in Japan did early animal testing in an artificial womb at least a decade back. I know this because I remember having a conversation about funding the development of this technology as a way for anti-abortion folks to put their money where their mouths are while on a church choir trip in 2008.
The fact of the matter is that abortion is worse than a wedge issue. It's a false
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I don't think that's true at all. Most of the pro-life voters I've known are people who genuinely care about protecting the unborn. Most of the pro-life politicians at least appear to be using the abortion issue as a means to get elected (though I suppose it is also possible that they're genuine but clueless). The number of pro-life folks who are actually misogynists is probably fairly small, though I'm sure that they do exist.
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Your argument, such as it is, rests on the assumption that the child in the womb does not have its own right to bodily self-determination. And it's exactly that assumption that pro-lifers disagree with.
Though it certainly is simpler to just assume that those you disagree with are innately evil.