Artificial Wombs: bold, controversial science coming soon
March 09 2008 / by futuretalk
Category: Other Year: General Rating: 14
By Dick Pelletier
Cutting-edge research in the U.S. and Japan will soon launch a new era in human procreation: a world in which embryos can be “brought to term” in artificial wombs, eliminating traditional pregnancies.
Cornell University’s Dr. Hung Chiung 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 a
New Atlantis magazine interview. Liu thinks her team could develop
an animal womb in 5 years, and a human model within 10.
In another experiment, Tokyo researcher Yosinori Kuwabara and colleagues kept goat fetuses growing for 10 days by connecting umbilical cords to machines that pump in blood, oxygen and nutrients, and dispose waste. While this womb is only a prototype, Kuwabara predicts that a fully functioning artificial womb capable of gestating a human fetus could evolve by 2010.
Experts believe artificial wombs will one day supplant natural ones – conception will become clinical; birth, bloodless. Gestation would be detached from motherhood, and the fetus would always be viable the instant sperm and egg fused.
Artificial wombs are the kind of technological prospect ethicists love to ponder. Philosopher Peter Singer claims “women will be helped, rather than harmed, by a technology that makes it possible to have children without being pregnant”. Feminist Shulamith Firestone agrees. “Once women break free from the tyranny of their reproductive biology, they could achieve full equality with men”.
Proponents believe artificial wombs will help women who have suffered miscarriages and hysterectomies; and couples who cannot conceive by themselves and do not wish to hire a surrogate, but still want their own baby.
Concerns over losing emotional connection between mother and newborn are unwarranted, says ethicist Roger Dworkin. Researchers predict that computerized programming with parent emotions and personalities will simulate human care and feelings 24/7 to insure perfect emotional development of children in artificial wombs.
However, North Carolina ethicist Rosemarie Tong disagrees, arguing that this science could lead to viewing children as “things”. The further we erode the mystery of how human life develops, she says, the more appealing it becomes to improve technology and demand greater control.
In the near term, experts say, most women will probably gestate their children the old-fashioned way, but career-minded females may welcome a new concept that enables them to raise a family without enduring the pregnancy that often weakens their job status.
Ultimately, this technology could enable anyone; single, married, male, female, young, old, heterosexual or gay, to combine DNA from their own body with a selected third party, and voilà; the gene pool marches on – and without any morning sickness or other negative side-effects.
In an unusual twist, this revolutionary science offers justification to pro-lifers in the abortion debates. Choosing an abortion to protect a mother’s health would no longer be necessary. Artificial wombs could bring all aborted embryos to term, thus saving countless lives.
Some see the artificial womb as a triumph of modern science – others see it as the ultimate human folly. Only time will tell which of these views are correct, as we get ready to enjoy this awe-inspiring and incredible “magical future”.
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Comment Thread (2 Responses)
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I still worry about the emotional connection between mother and child, regardless of what research says, but I’m sure that’s my generational bias. Women of the not-so-distant future will surely adopt this technology faster than I would. In the same vein as what Rosemarie Tong argues, I worry about the maternal bond created during the 9 months. Without that, would mothers have as strong of a maternal, instinctual connection with their child?
Although this will be wonderful tech for those who cannot conceive or bring to term, I’m personally more looking forward to technologies that will make natural births safer, less painful and less physically damaging to the female body.
Posted by: Marisa Vitols March 09, 2008
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Today, information technologies do not exist that can create adequate mother-child bonding, and this segment of the technology may have to wait for advances in artificial intelligence (2015?), or even the number crunching abilities of quantum computers (2020?).
But the fact that this science will save the lives of embryos that may otherwise be destroyed, and will gain women more empowerment in their lives, suggests that it will become reality one day.
Also, this technology resolves a dilemma that has been gnawing at my conscience for years – the abortion issue.
As a liberal Democrat, I support a woman’s right to own her body and believe that she should make the decision whether to abort a fetus or not.
However, my positive futurist views that life is the most valuable commodity in the universe and it should never be destroyed for any reason wins out. So I am against abortions.
But artificial wombs will end the need for abortions all together. Clinics utilizing this science could bring any baby to term, and if the mother did not wish to keep the child, it could be offered for adoption and become an active citizen (soon to be endowed with an indefinite lifespan).
Comments on this radical topic are most welcome.
Posted by: futuretalk March 09, 2008
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