The science isn’t far off … from being able to replicate the ideal gestation conditions in a temperature-controlled, infection-free womb with a view. An artificial umbilical cord can provide oxygen and nutrition as the tot floats in artificial amniotic fluid, continually refreshed with precisely tailored hormones, antibodies and growth factors. Baby waste products can be removed, run through a bioreactor and enzymatically converted back into “a steady and sustainable supply of fresh nutrients.”
Loz Blain
December 12, 2022
Womb with a view: EctoLife baby farm eliminates pregnancy and labor
[It’s a Brave New World. What could possibly go wrong?—Joe]
We can’t grow a kidney from stem cells but whole baby is no problem? Stick this in the circular file with cold fusion, warp drives and palatable fake meat.
If you read the article, they make it very clear this is not reality, yet.
And it never will be. This is one of those sci-fi ideas that gets promoted but never delivers. It’s just to fill up column inches and court venture capital.
It can’t be much of a womb with a view, I recall that Preemies, need to have the light carefully limited, as the light causes birth defects.
If this ever became a reality, who would own and be responsible for the children thus created? A corporation? A whole world of Truman Show? As Bill Cosby’s portrayal of Noah getting messages from God said, “Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.”
They would remain in a sort of corporate care, which sucks off their electrical impulses to power the machines. Unless they take the red pill.
Given that we still don’t know exactly what the spark of soul is that brings the meat to life inside the mother, I’m going to put artificial wombs and the people pushing it in the same category as I’d put a character in a Lovecraft novel trying to bring elder gods into the local neighborhood with dimension-gates, and say something between “hard pass” and “you must die, and you must die NOW!”
No good can come of it.
Don’t give a damn; have a gramme. Soma!
“Baby waste products can be removed, run through a bioreactor and enzymatically converted back into a steady and sustainable supply of fresh nutrients.”
“Eat recycled food, it’s not that bad for you.” Was the line from some grade B sci-fi.
Feeding babies their own shit for food sounds very new world order, Klaus Scwhab-be-in. Glad I’m short this world.
Funny how man is always trying to mechanically copy and sanitize the processes already created. Then calling them his, and an improvement. (Albeit an expensive one.)
And it completely misses the point of the operation in the first place. All a man and woman go threw in creating and rising new life, may be somewhat messy. But that is life. Life was meant to be messy.
It’s not meant to be emotionless process. How is a mother to form that savage bond for her children?
How’s the father to look on them as something he would sacrifice his life for?
Good sci-fi though.
Also look up Rever’s, from that grade B sci-fi. Firefly. It seems to be the real future of mankind after all the computer brain-chip, transhuman ideology comes to fruit.
God’s plan for man is messy. Ain’t no getting around it.
How is a mother to form that savage bond for her children?
How’s the father to look on them as something he would sacrifice his life for?
Exactly. The point is to demolish the basic building block of society, the family. They already financially incentivize unmarried parents and broken homes (ask me how I know). Removing the physiologically-hardwired emotional bond between parents and kids is a future step; whether it’s the next step is debatable, but it is a step that must happen.
(The line from your first “grade B scifi” is, “Eat recycled food. It’s good for the environment and okay for you.” 😉 )
To me the point is that creating a lie is one thing. Trying to make people live with that lie is doomed to fail.
We see the elitists doing this very thing today. From climate change/zero carbon dioxide to not eating meat. It’s always fails. Humans won’t abide it for long.
“Eat recycled food”
Judge Dredd, Stallone version.
Tanks, but no tanks.
scifi authors — notably, Lois Bujold — have speculated on what the impact of such technology would be on social structures and gender roles.
i’m thinking (more or less, like Bujold seems to) that it wouldn’t _in and of itself_ change life all that much. but it would enable abuses and misuses that could and would, unless and until those in turn were reigned in.
some women might have kids this way who can’t (or just don’t want to) be the incubator themselves. that wouldn’t be a huge change. some governments would use it to create artificial baby booms for the good of the state, and that would be disastrous in the long term — for them and for the kids thusly made, but not likely for much anyone else.
perhaps, as per one example Bujold came up with, some people would use it to create multi-generational all-male societies that just required occasional infusions of female gene samples to keep themselves from fatal inbreeding. _those_ might turn out interesting to sociologists and anthropologists of the far future, but likely wouldn’t have any huge impact on the rest of us either.
biggest change might be that abortion could (eventually, maybe) be rendered mostly needless for any case not involving fatal foetal deformity; just transplant the kid to an artificial womb, and find some source of funding to finance the rest of the story. yeah, that last little detail would be the tricky bit…
Yeah, I thought of the abortion angle too. Hadn’t thought it through to the financing part though. Perhaps enough adoptive parents would exist to take care of the rest of story.
I thought of the Vorkosigan books right off too.
And that would complicate the abortion arguments. If the woman wants to dump the fetus, and the man wants to keep it, “You don’t have to carry it, I’ll pay to have to transferred to an artificial womb and raise it!” If the woman aborts it, could he charge her with manslaughter or some other charge?