Artificial wombs becoming viable

[Tigger]

Not necessary, especially when the woman has her own career/job. Actually, not necessary at all. Women are perfectly capable of choosing what to do with their time.

That's a different sort of situation, that I'm not necessarily in favor of to begin with; so we're probably best off leaving this where it stands..... agreeing to disagree and moving on.

 

[Peter Grimm]

So we'll start making babies in factories soon.

Will you be able to patent a baby?

 

[molten_dragon]

you could guarantee it would get a constant stream of the exact nutrients it needed.

I highly doubt that. Baby formula has been around since the 1920s and they still haven't come up with formula that is as good for a baby as breast milk. Somehow I doubt that they're going to be able to do any better when it's in the womb.

 

[ChuckBerry]

I highly doubt that. Baby formula has been around since the 1920s and they still haven't come up with formula that is as good for a baby as breast milk. Somehow I doubt that they're going to be able to do any better when it's in the womb.

Millions of formula fed babies grow into healthy adults all the time, so your analogy is inapt.

 

[molten_dragon]

Millions of formula fed babies grow into healthy adults all the time, so your analogy is inapt.

I don't see how so. Sarcogito made the point that an artificial womb might be better for growing a child than the mother's womb since you could control exactly what nutrients it got. I pointed out that was unlikely since they haven't been able to come up with baby formula that's as good as breast milk in close to 100 years. I'm not saying they won't be able to create an artificial womb that you can grow a fetus to term in, I'm saying it's not likely to do as good a job as a mother's uterus.

 

[GEIxBattleRifle]

I highly doubt that. Baby formula has been around since the 1920s and they still haven't come up with formula that is as good for a baby as breast milk. Somehow I doubt that they're going to be able to do any better when it's in the womb.

Breast milk I heard is good to build up the immune system but does it lead to higher risks of being overweight?

 

[molten_dragon]

Breast milk I heard is good to build up the immune system but does it lead to higher risks of being overweight?

Not that I know of. In fact up until recently, it was believed that breastfeeding helped lower the risk of obesity, although that's coming under some question now.

 

[choiceone]

If this were even remotely true, men would have a right to abort a fetus regardless of a womens wishes.

But that isn't legal, because what you wrote isn't accurate.

Actually, people do have a right to their own genetic material, but only if they do not give it away. In PIV sex, a man gives a woman his sperm when he puts it inside her body. He doesn't have a right to it any more, because he gave it away. That's what happens when people are not careful about whom they give their stuff to. A woman does not give away her ova when she has PIV sex. The ova remain in her body. When fertilization occurs, the man does not "own" the zygote, but it cannot be claimed that the woman gave away ownership of the ovum just because it was fertilized. She has the right to claim that her ovum was polluted and/or damaged by the sperm, but the guy does not have the same right. If you want to keep rights over the genetic code of your sperm, keep the sperm inside your own body.

 

[choiceone]

society gets to put restriction on what you can do with your body.

you can't choose to rip your heart out.

you can't perform a self abortion either. If we can successfully extract a fetus from you and bring it to viability, society has the power to do just that.

you can make up ridiculous laws that don't exist all you want. they aren't anything more then your opinion.

You can choose to commit suicide after having made a legal will stating that you want your body to be cremated and selecting an executor for your will whom you know will actually execute what you say. Hence, society has no power to force your body to continue a pregnancy. And as for extracting a fetus from you after you are dead - well, so far, no previable fetus has ever survived the death of the woman carrying it.

 

[choiceone]

One of the weaknesses of quite a few posts here seems to come from the posters not having read the OP link in detail. The artificial wombs being developed at Cornell require using some of the woman's own endometrial cells. The news article is talking about using the endometrial cells for scaffolding to which a blastocyst can attach. As I have said on other threads, the pragmatic scientific problems are as follows.

First, it's true that, at present, it is illegal to grow a human blastocyst in lab equipment for more than 14 days. But we know from research with blastocysts of other mammalian species that, prior to the use of endometrial cells for scaffolding/artificial wombs, when scientists try to grow blastocysts in the lab, they can only get the blastocysts to have a life span as long as they would have in the female prior to implantation unless they use supernutrients. When they use supernutrients, they can double the life span.

Since the preimplantation life span of the human blastocyst is only 8-10 days, scientists can use supernutrients to give them a longer life span in the lab, but they can't go beyond 14 days by law, even though, theoretically, they should be able to expand the life span to 16-20 days even without the use of the endometrial cells. But so far, no one has reported growing nonhuman blastocysts with endometrial cells beyond a doubling of the preimplantation life span.

There is a very real problem with trying to transfer an embryo/fetus already attached to a woman's body by removing it and growing it outside the woman's body. It has to survive long enough for the transfer. This is a pragmatic problem for those who wish to see this as an alternative to abortion.

But there is still a political or "rights" problem. The endometrial tissue is not politically neutral, because it clearly belongs to the woman's body and, therefore, to the woman. I cannot see any way constitutional law could allow the state to remove any of the woman's endometrial cells from her body without her expressed consent just to extend the life span of an embryo or fetus, because it does not allow the state to take your kidney or any of your blood without your expressed consent just to extend the life span of an already born person who cannot live without it. And if we changed the law for an embryo or fetus, that change would undoubtedly be used (or abused) for the latter case.

Talk about slippery slopes . . . .

 

[Aunt Spiker]

lol - all this talk of breast millk nutrients and synthetics make think of The Matrix, "It's a single cell protein combined with synthetic aminos, vitamins, and minerals. Everything the body needs."

But it's still sub-quality and tastes like ****.

I don't support the idea of trying to conceive and grow a baby in such an environment as part of a science experiment - what if the human environment is essential for proper muscle development and all test-womb babies grow up to be physically deformed?

I support limited abortion because having CHILDREN is not a light-weight topic. It's a serious undertaking whether you raise them directly or not - creating and bringing a being into the world is a heavy and serious endeavor - no one should do it if they intend on doing it half-assed.

 

[SheWolf]

I don't
really care about the abortion angle of it, but if artificial wombs were perfected there would certainly be some advantages. It would probably be easier to monitor the health of the fetus and you could guarantee it would get a constant stream of the exact nutrients it needed. And of course the woman doesn't have through go through the ordeal of carrying and giving birth.

But there will always be women who want the experience of doing it the natural way.

I wonder if the artificial womb children would be different, have learning or emotional disabilities because gestating involves more than just growing and nutrition. They hear the mom's heart beat constantly, and they bond and become familiar to her voice.

 

[Sarcogito]

I wonder if the artificial womb children would be different, have learning or emotional disabilities because gestating involves more than just growing and nutrition. They hear the mom's heart beat constantly, and they bond and become familiar to her voice.

I don't know. A heart beat could be simulated. It would be interesting to see if any studies have been done on the children of deaf mothers, who likely don't talk much if at all when pregnant.