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Artificial Womb

  • Hanul
  • Dec 25, 2022
  • 3 min read

In response to a great increase of interest in artificial technologies, some might say “we are playing God,” but has brought interest in developing artificial ways of raising babies with an artificial technology: Artificial Womb.


An experiment has been conducted on a fatal lamb. It is due to the concern and the fact that the lamb has a farewell time period of pregnancy, but a little faster than the human pregnancy period, which provides the same condition of experiment to scientists and is able to conclude the result within a shorter amount of time. The artificial womb was designed in a concept of "Bag of Fluid" to provide a similar condition of development to the lamb. The lambs tested on the experiment were between 15 to 17 weeks, until the 21 week of full gestation period for sheep. They were clearly removed from the sheep and replaced in a bag of plastic full of fluid that can protect the lambs from infectious and outer damages. In order to copy the uterus's environment, fluid was a mixture of water and salt. A problem occurred which is that the lamb itself cannot breathe by itself. In nature, they get the amount of oxygen they need directly from their mother, when they breathe, lambs also receive the oxygen. To solve this problem, the solution provided by the team was to use the lamb's own heartbeats to collect the oxygen from the device, instead of using an oxygenator.


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IMG Credit: UPSC Daily Current Affairs


The experiment was conducted for 4 weeks. During the period of the experiment, the lamb remained healthy and well adapted to the artificial womb system just like the natural environment. Thus, some lambs were able to be concluded as "born" in a definition of nature such as experimenter GA-135.


As a result of the success, the US Food and Drug Administration started to engage in the experiment to extend the experiment to develop to a level of designing a device for the human infant. However, the new set goal is much more complex than testing on a lamb because human infants require a longer time of pregnancy. The new goal of the team is to support the 24 weeks old infants until the week of 28. As the average growth of human infants is one of the slowest growing progress, it required a higher amount of time and financial aid to support the project to happen.


The problem is not only about the lack of support and technology. It is also about ethical issues raised by the people who are against it. As stated by some people, raising infants or animals in a different set of trials by ourselves is against the law of nature and causes a collapse of balance in nature. At the same time, some religious perspective of humans playing God by developing life is blocking further experiments about the artificial womb.


However, it is not based on true resolutions. According to the purpose of the artificial womb, it is to protect infants or animals from getting diseases or experimentally disabilities their progress of development by putting them into a condition where it can be managed, therefore, blocking the possibilities of obstacles in the first place. At the same time, it is not about playing God, but a form of how to protect and preserve ourselves from nature.


Therefore, the artificial womb still faces some struggles to support life for all organisms, but once it is fully developed it would be able to bring the health condition for the future and present to be improved by supporting life while preserving possible factors that can affect life in a time period of pregnancy. It is for life, not for God. Some might say God is the only one who can possess it, but there is no such thing as never and once it is believed to benefit, it is better to do it, rather than be blocked by people who are against it.


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