8 ms·
>Is it ethical, for instance, to develop human embryos outside of the womb for convenience? Why not, assuming outcome is identical?
by tormeh 10y ago
>Is it ethical, for instance, to develop human embryos outside of the womb for convenience?
Why not, assuming outcome is identical?
- omginternets 10y ago>assuming outcome is identical Well sure, if we're assuming there's no problem, then there's on problem, but that's a bit ... circular... Moreover, there's a mountain of evidence showing that prenatal environment shapes a large swath of physical and psychological traits.
- derefr 10y agoThat mountain of evidence mostly says that the in vivo prenatal environment is kind of... awful, though. As in, mother and foetus competing for nutrients with better maternal genes resulting in better defenses against the placental "parasite", and thus worse developmental outcomes; and better foetal genes resulting in better parasitic strategies to penetrate the uterine wall, and thus worse perinatal health outcomes for the mother. I'd honestly stake >$10k, at this point, on the hypothesis that "growing children from embroyos in vitro, hooked up to an unlimited nutrient drip" will result in children much healthier than "regular" children, along every axis we can think of. (Presuming, of course, that we first figure out every micro-nutrient such a drip would be required to provide.)
- SamReidHughes 10y agoWhat would happen though is eventually humans would lose the ability to naturally produce children.
- derefr 10y agoWhat is "naturally?" At some point in technological progress, we need to build machines to have children. But go a bit further along the line, and maybe we'd find the human body automatically building the machine that builds the human body—in effect, laying eggs.
- badosu 10y ago> At some point in technological progress, we need to build machines to have children Why?
- SamReidHughes 10y agoTo outbreed the bad guys.
- derefr 10y agoEr, sorry, I just meant that as "at some [early] point along the timeline of the possible developments in biomedical technology, the world would look like one where—at least early adopters—would need a machine to make children." I didn't mean to imply that there's some sort of imperative to go toward that point.
- shouldbworking 10y agoI've seen this in a bunch of movies but it just occurred to me that this may eventually happen to humanity. Birthing children is dangerous for the mother and child, and if given the choice many women may decide to have one "grown" instead.
- gscott 10y agoThere will be enough poor people that can't afford to have their children grown who will still be able to get pregnant.
- derefr 10y agoBut the continuation of the human "species" as a single entity would then assume/require class miscegenation to re-constrain the DNA from the in vitro-grown humans every few generations. Otherwise, you'd now have two diverging human species, who might eventually not even be able to interbreed.
- type0 10y ago> Otherwise, you'd now have two diverging human species, who might eventually not even be able to interbreed. It's a possible outcome in a few centuries. We might get one human species that would call themselves robot-overlords, those would be born in artificial wombs have artificially enhanced brains and have very prominent positions on Earth. The plebs would sleep on the stairs and drink their soylent green.
- SamReidHughes 10y agoIn any reasonably competent universe the costs would head towards zero.
- BronSteeDiam 10y agoThat's a situation we already face. There's a line of humans who can only reproduce with IVF.
- Oxitendwe 10y agoThat's not a situation "we" as a culture/civilization/species face, it's a situation they face. The rest of us are perfectly capable of doing what our bodies are designed to do without doctors and scientists and other forms of assistance.
- suddenseizure 10y agoIVF babies aren't guaranteed to be infertile, they just have a slightly higher chance of it (because of selection bias in the parents). My wife and I might well have babies via IVF because she can't get pregnant while on chemotherapy - but that doesn't mean we carry any infertility genes. She just had the bad luck to have some cells mutate into cancer.
- Oxitendwe 10y agoWhat kind of infrastructure will this require? You'll need researchers to learn how such an object can be feasible, engineers to design it, people to construct it, parts must be ordered (some of which you might not even have the capability to make yourself), raw materials to make the parts must be mined, logistics must be done to make sure all of these parts are in the right place at the right time, enterprises must be constructed around building, selling, and marketing these devices. What kind of power dynamics does that create? It involves the work of hundreds of thousands of people across every sort of country spanning the entire globe, many of whom hold a vast amount of power over you and the rest of whom have no obligation except financial to cooperate with you. What exactly do we gain from giving so many people such vast power over us?
- omginternets 10y agoI'll bet against you. In fact, you inadvertently bring up the very undoing of your hypothetical bet when you say... >presuming, of course, that we first figure out every micro-nutrient such a drip would be required to provide. It's important to understand that these micro-nutrients and other chemical signalling-agents vary through time, and in response to such things as social environment, bodily movement of the mother, sensory input (sight, hearing, olfaction, the haptic senses, etc), occasional punctual stress, pleasure etc. You're ignoring a huge source of complexity which is the systematic variation of these signals in response to the external environment. Temporal dynamics of signaling pathways matter. That's simply not the kind of thing we're even remotely close to being able to simulate in a synthetic system. Hell it's not even something we're remotely close to understanding.
- nkrisc 10y agoAssuming identical outcomes, perhaps there's no issue, but you don't make the leap to identical outcomes without first progressing through outcomes that are probably worse to begin with.
- BronSteeDiam 10y agoHaving just had our first child, I see a lot of room for improvement. Identical outcomes is a low bar, in the long-term. So then the question becomes, is the short-term pain worth a much safer future. One of the interesting things about humans is we're all born preterm, because of our large heads and narrow hips. So you can potentially extended gestation by another term.
- Chaebixi 10y agoBecause, over the long term, it would reduce the selective pressure on the ability to gestate embryos in vivo, unnecessarily increasing dependence on technology. We should try to avoid adding extinction to the list of consequences of the collapse of technological civilization.
- mrfusion 10y agoProviding eyeglasses reduces the selective pressure for good eyesight.
- wtbob 10y agoThat's actually something I worry about. I'm blind without my glasses, seriously, debilitatingly blind. With them, of course, I have better-than-perfect (for some value of 'perfect') vision. Should I have children? Is it ethical to do so? I honestly don't know.
- libc 10y agoWhat is your specific visual condition, if you don't mind my asking. Most people who I'd characterize as "debilitatingly blind" are lucky if they get any benefit from conventional eyeglasses, let alone "better-than-perfect" vision. I have a significant visual impairment myself (myopia, aphakia, and nystagmus) but I wouldn't put myself in that category.
- wtbob 10y agoAstigmatism and severe myopia. They're easily correctable, but without glasses I can't see more than about three inches from my nose. At normal viewing distances I simply cannot even see things other people can see, like letters, small animals or children &c. Without glasses I'd be severely crippled. I've conducted a few experiments trying to move around in public without them, and it's beyond frightening.
- 10y ago
- rosser 10y agoThat's ... quite an assumption.