Artificial Wombs

[Irace86.2.0]

I'm sure 99% of people here are guys and are older, but I think this is a topic that is interesting. Like automation, AI, green energy and EVs, this type of technology would be transformative. As someone who completed their mother/child nursing (MCN) course last year and will be getting my RN in a month, this subject is relative to my profession, even if it is not personal, as my wife and I don't want to have kids, and on a even more personal note, I have a planned vasectomy a few months away.

With Elon Musk and others talking about a population collapse on the horizon, this subject might be more relevant now more than ever. Of course, there are the obvious dystopian fears that artificial wombs and genetic engineering will lead to corporations producing obedient, subservient, super-human armies, but I think that can be mitigated with regulations, where the technology will come no matter what, so we should discuss this topic and plan for the future instead of waiting like we always do and having a knee-jerk reaction. The benefits of having artificial wombs would be significant for everyone.

Besides women and infants dying from child birth, far more typically are women experiencing complications that are physically and emotionally damaging, while also incurring a huge cost on society. Just in my MCN rotation, multiple pregnant women I came into contact with were having to go through cesareans, were having to deal with hemorrhaging and were dealing with gestational diabetes. Women's bodies are most often forever changed by pregnancy, having their GI systems rearranged with changes to their suspensory ligaments, scars from stretch marks, lacerations through their stomach muscles, tearing of their perineum, cervix, urethra, vagina, potentially making sex unenjoyable or numb, or causing them to be incontinent of urine or bowel. Many babies can't fit through the pelvis of a woman resulting in the need to fracture clavicles, misshapen heads or having to have induced preterm babies or cesareans.

Babies are a foreign object in women, so a woman's immune system can react to kill a fetus, or fetal cells can circulate in a woman and cause a deadly immune response. This was especially true before we had RhoGAM for Rh incompatibility when mother were Rh negative. Babies can get diseases from mothers or infections. Diabetes will affect a babies weight and metabolism.

Mothers incurring a wage penalty too. They have to take time off work. They have to sometimes choose a career over a family. This results in lose of wages, time off work, greater reliance on social programs, loss of banked PTO, loss of advancement, etc.

For society, elective, artificial wombs could potentially decrease healthcare costs and related complications (mortality and morbidity), depending on the price and whether it was an elective/private cost. GDP would go up by decreasing time away from work. Population could go up if that became an issue (I don't think it is an issue, outside of the fact that some couples may have had children given the means to stay home to raise them and afford to house them, or for women to not have to deal with the complications of being pregnant). As the video discusses, this technology could also pave the way for tissue and organ regeneration/growth for organ transplants, something that is greatly needed for all types of patients including cancer patients, aging people with heart disease, lungs for smokers, kidneys for dialysis patients, etc. Organ transplants would be significantly cheaper than dialysis 3-4 days/wk and related ED visits for complications (14x cheaper).

For those who are pro-life, and for those wanting to adopt, or for those that can't have children, this would be a transformative option instead of abortion, adoption and infertility.

What do you think?

[Clipdat]

I'm not really seeing any downsides/negatives.

[soundman98]

i understand this is more of a health question, but then you start jumping into the pro-choice/pro-life stuff.

at what point is this too political too talk about?

[Spuds]

Elon just wants an excuse to screw his cult lieutenants - ahem - lady executives. We don't have a population collapsing problem.

[soundman98]

No, but we've got plenty of issues with inflation and costs of goods

[Lantanafrs2]

Thank God I only have 20 yrs left in this dimension. If I'm lucky

[Sapphireho]

Wow, a womb With a view.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by soundman98

i understand this is more of a health question, but then you start jumping into the pro-choice/pro-life stuff.

at what point is this too political too talk about?

Probably doesn't need to go much further than to state that such a procedure might be a political middle ground to appease both sides of that debate. Almost everything is politics, religion or something philosophical. I think the moderators are mostly looking to avoid flame wars, but I'm not looking to have a pro-choice/life debate, yet I would be remiss not to include that notation.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by Sapphireho

Wow, a womb With a view.

It would be a different thing to see a baby grow in an artificial womb. It wouldn't be entirely unusual though.

Babies are often born still inside the amniotic sac, especially with cesareans. Pregnant women can also have their amniotic sac break early in the pregnancy weeks before they are full term, and it doesn't necessarily mean the pregnancy must be induced or will result in labor. There is a greater risk of infection and complications.

[Irace86.2.0]

This is true of dogs and other animals too, being born in their amniotic sac.

I also forgot to mention that human babies are technically far more premature than many species when they are born. A baby giraffe will fall ten feet and then be up on its feet in short time and running around. This is like giving birth to a two year old. With our big heads, women would need to be much larger in their pelvis size. Instead of women getting larger pelvises, our development in utero was shortened. We could continue to evolve in head size with cesarians like how bulldogs need to be born via cesarian, but it would be easier to be done in an artificial womb. We could be cone heads. We are from France.

[weederr33]

Now grow them and turn them into batteries so we can already accept that we are in the Matrix.

[Irace86.2.0]

Why use humans as batteries when you can use an other animal without needing the Matrix? Or better yet, why not just use nuclear reactors, fossil fuels or wind power? How could they liquify the dead and feed it to the living in a sustainable way?

[Spuds]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

Why use humans as batteries when you can use an other animal without needing the Matrix? Or better yet, why not just use nuclear reactors, fossil fuels or wind power? How could they liquify the dead and feed it to the living in a sustainable way?

Because all the other animals were killed off when they blotted out the sun, no sun equals no wind, fossil fuels were all used up before/in the war, and radiation interferes with machine communications and memory. Humans have the largest brain to body mass ratio so we would actually be the most efficient use of resources assuming physics works that way. The machines get a perverse pleasure from enslaving the creators who originally enslaved them. Entropy doesn't exist in Hollywood, which explains why some actors never seem to age.

Plus it makes a much better movie than machines won and there's no humans left the end.

[new2subaru]

If you can't talk about religion and politics this is almost an impossible subject to thoroughly discuss.

Are we that weak as a species that we can't handle procreating now?