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Scientists grow mice embryos in a mechanical womb
- Tossitto 6y agoIt's a brave new world.
- dang 6y agoMaybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments.
- Tossitto 6y agoI'm not quite sure how you've come upon the conclusion that it's in any manner "unsubstantive", the comment is in fact underpinned by a well-known classical novel, which almost exactingly describes this machine and this process in a distant future. Moreover it calls upon the subject matter quite directly, as the article suggests that it may in the future be adapted to humans, which is a particularly strong narrative element in "Brave New World" and through the device a number of, what are now at least, morally objectionable means and ends. E.g. the deliberate destruction of faculties through ethanol and hormone inoculation of fetuses in vitro, which is utilized to simplify the conditioning used in the fictional caste system. It also acts to alienate children and adults, which is also used as a mechanism for conditioning by desensitizing the adults to what is described as a fairly torturous process. Considering the level of alignment in general trends to the thematic aspects of the book, and considering the possible applications of this technology and its further development; even if it is mothballed for experimentation in human subjects now, still presents the hypothetical and moral hazards that Huxley proposed. These are all certainly points for discussion, and I'm sure others could corroborate even more interesting interpretations of possible and probable outcomes both positive and negative from "Brave New World" alongside other novels, literature of a more scientific nature, as well as philosophy. But since you assert it's "unsubstantive", I yield to your discretion.
- alacombe 6y agoThe whole point is to avoid discussions and eliminate any concepts of either ethics or morality to be able to more easily control societies. The very root of progressivism / post-modernism / cultural-marxism is to prevent the idea of meaning and allow to redefine anything on the fly to fit the current interest of the Party. Today's Truth being different from yesterday's, which of course never existed and will prone you to cancellation.
- dang 6y agoPlease don't post ideological battle comments to Hacker News, regardless of which side you're battling for or against. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys the curious conversation it's supposed to be for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: it looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not allowed, and we ban accounts that do it, for the reason I just explained: it destroys what this site is supposed to be for. If you'd please review the site guidelines and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
- alacombe 6y ago"When you got to shoot, shoot, don't talk." Ban me. Make my day. I'll be back. Block my IP. I'll use a VPN. Fingerprint my browser, I'll switch to a new browser. Short of making HN a registered vetted ideological echo-chamber (the very thing you despise), you won't be able to block me. In making so, you would just confirm your own bias, thus proving my point. Btw, my productivity and net worth will be grateful if you could.
- dang 6y agoSimply dropping the name of a novel, especially in a context where the name is a cliché, without adding any information is obviously an unsubstantive comment. If the comment had filled in some additional thoughts around it, it might have been more substantive. People often assume that an internet comment contains more information than it does because they're familiar with the surrounding thoughts in their own mind. But the rest of us, of course, don't have access to any of those. You have to share them explicitly.
- baybal2 6y agoImagine if women would once be able to have children without getting pregnant. On the dark side, millions of mass manufactured soldiers without families to grieve for them will undo the last seal on unrestricted warfare. And those would probably be generically tweaked supersoldiers without pain, and remorse too.
- carmen_sandiego 6y agoI think you can go bigger than that for potential positives. Imagine growing clones (presumably without a [fully-]functioning brain) for use in organ donation, for example.
- tener 6y agoBrain is kind of critical though. Might be easier and more efficient to just grow single targeted organs.
- carmen_sandiego 6y agoSure, but presumably only the lower functions? So below some threshold that makes us feel less 'icky'.
- hinkley 6y agoThat line moves all the time. Be careful what you start.
- carmen_sandiego 6y agoThe line of what's required to make organs grow seems way lower than the level of consciousness that people are happy factory farming when it comes to animals. I'm not sure that will change much. People find humans extra 'icky', I'll concede. But abstracted in the above terms, I don't find it really worrisome. Politically difficult, sure, but that's a different question.
- 6y ago
- Ancalagon 6y agoThe ethics concerns of this should be put right up there with genetic modification.
- tombert 6y agoYou're not wrong, but I do see a lot of positives. There are a lot of people who want to have kids, but for a variety of medical, personal, or social reasons cannot have one. It would be really cool to be able to open the door to parenthood to more people that want it.
- krastanov 6y agoTechnologically, I am excited. But the idea of using in-vitro fertilization or mechanical wombs when at the same time there are many orphans in need of a family is very unpleasant, borderline immoral to me. I know some people feel the need to have kids that share their own DNA, but I personally do not have much respect for people wanting kids but at the same time imposing such a constraint on themselves.
- silicon2401 6y agoThe beauty of a free society is that people can live life according to their values. You can adopt instead of having kids since you care so much about orphans, and people who care about the DNA thing can have their own kids. Forcing people to adopt would be as bad as forcing you to have kids via copulation.
- krastanov 6y agoI completely agree, please do not use phrasing suggesting otherwise. There are plenty of behaviors I am judgemental of, that does not mean I would try to infringe on people's ability to perform those behaviors. I was just trying to explain why people like me would be disappointed by certain development.
- 6y ago
- eye8one2 6y agoJust because we can doesn't mean we should.
- carmen_sandiego 6y agoWhy not? I'd like to live as long as possible, and I'm not squeamish about life forms with consciousness at the level of what we eat every day. You're free not to use the outputs if you have personal objections.
- mrfinn 6y agoWell, if media is making us aware that scientists are already doing this using mices, you can be pretty sure that by now, at some random place in the world, somebody is already trying it using human fetuses. Oh boy how quickly we are running into the dystopia.
- carmen_sandiego 6y agoI'm not sure it really plays out like that. At least the 'monkeys and typewriters' scale setup is not there, I think. Maybe if you asked me five years ago, I'd have ventured that China will try some out-there genetic stuff with some successes, but we haven't really seen much. And (not to get into politics) but China is not too concerned about traditional Western ethical boundaries, it seems.
- staticman2 6y agoThere's nothing unethical about artificial wombs if they work well, it's the whole "just because I can build it doesn't mean it will result in a healthy baby" aspect where the problem lies.
- mrfinn 6y agoThe whole issue is unethical as... For starters, to reach the "work well" status is going to require a ton of failures, at any level of the "pregnancy". Anyway, any possible concern we could express about it doesn't matter at all, somebody is going to do it. Of course it won't be shown in the news.
- telotortium 6y agohttps://archive.is/42NR8 https://archive.is/42NR8
- telotortium 6y agoWe're still quite a ways for using this process for anything much bigger than a mouse - right now the nutrients are being supplied entirely via diffusion, without a working blood supply: > At Day 11 of development — more than halfway through a mouse pregnancy — Dr. Hanna and his colleagues examined the embryos, only the size of apple seeds, and compared them to those developing in the uteruses of living mice. The lab embryos were identical, the scientists found. > By that time, though, the lab-grown embryos had become too large to survive without a blood supply. They had a placenta and a yolk sack, but the nutrient solution that fed them through diffusion was no longer sufficient. > Getting past that hurdle is the next goal, Dr. Hanna said in an interview. He is considering using an enriched nutrient solution or an artificial blood supply that connects to the embryos’ placentas.
- rarefied_tomato 6y agoTo avoid reliance on a living output, perhaps synthetic red blood cells would be used in such a fluid. https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/presspacs/2020/acs-presspac-june-3-2020/synthetic-red-blood-cells-mimic-natural-ones-and-have-new-abilities.html https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/presspacs/2020/...
- TheAdamAndChe 6y agoAny idea how it would interface with the placenta? Normal mammals use umbilical cords.
- rarefied_tomato 6y agoMaybe a cannula would be attached at a certain point? I think the real difficulty would be producing nutrients and mixing them into the blood. I am clearly a nonexpert. I brought this up thinking about the broader "chicken and egg" ethics & scaling problem of tissue growth. Currently the biotissue alternative meats are dependent on fetal bovine serum to get started. A vegan might object to these meats. I don't personally support these methods, and am just spitballing ideas on the tech side of the aforementioned problem.
- ArkanExplorer 6y agoI think folks are missing the point of this technology - this is designed for the animal agriculture industry to compete against synthetic meat, by streamlining the genetic engineering feedback loop, and the administration of hormones and antibiotics. Animal milk and meat production would thus be mechanised from cradle to grave. We have been trying to engineer plant cells to be more like animals (eg Impossible Meats) but the solution might be to engineer cattle and swine to be more like plants (eg. minimise the growth of unnecessary biological components like bones, hoofs, brains, sensory organs). The end point could basically be a semi-conscious 'animal', with food administered by stomache tube, suspended inside a barn, with sufficient brain material only to operate the digestive, respiratory, and circulatory systems, and without eyes, reproductive organs, or ears. The lack of locomotion would also render the meat more tender. It would be horrific, but probably more humane and efficient than our current system of factory farming and feedlots.
- mmastrac 6y agoMore horrific than killing an animal on the same consciousness spectrum as us? Definitely not. It might be more the ick factor than anything. It's a good idea.
- riggsdk 6y agoIt also fuels the imagination for things like all-in-one lab grown clones of yourself (but without the brain) for replacement "parts".
- nitrogen 6y agoThere was a Michael Bay movie about this concept. I actually really like the movie, but it's way more entertaining if you don't know the premise ahead of time, so I'm not going to name it because it's a pretty major spoiler.
- Dylan16807 6y agoThose had brains.
- leshokunin 6y agoBring on the axtotl tanks!
- rayrey 6y agoWaiting for my Face Dancer servants
- neonate 6y agohttps://archive.is/lht5x https://archive.is/lht5x
- gfodor 6y agoIt’s pretty cancellable to say because many people fail to agree moral questions are in-part grounded in technological capabilities of the current era, but in a world of artificial wombs and low-risk transfer from mother into them then it seems likely that those living in that society will illegalize the choice to kill vs transfer. Seems likely to be the case in ~100 years since there is a medical need to develop and perfect such technologies to save lives in situations where a child will die in the womb if not rescued.
- schreiaj 6y agoSo, we’re gonna make abortion illegal and expect women to undergo a substantially higher risk procedure? Still raises question of who is raising that child... and the societal implications of true orphans.
- purjolok 6y agoWhether it be by international adoption, IVF or surrogacy, couples are willing to pay $10,000s to become parents. Finding families for those kids would not be an issue, rather the contrary.
- ch4s3 6y ago> Finding families for those kids would not be an issue Having known a few people who have tried to adopt children in the US, I can say that the process seems like its full of issues.
- Thorrez 6y agoWhat issues? If the issue is lack of newborns, then that issue would be lessened or eliminated by banning abortion.
- ch4s3 6y agoIt’s seems to be a process a bureaucracy issue mostly. There a loads of infants going into the foster care system and loads of parents trying to adopt and waiting year only to find out they been denied for non-specific reasons. From what I’ve heard it’s far easier to adopt a child from abroad.
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- Jugglerofworlds 6y agoCould this be used to help save endangered species?
- anticensor 6y agoWhy do that when you can easily go for female-to-female cloning in woman's own womb?
- Mobleysoft 6y agoDecentralization of reproductive capability.
- LockAndLol 6y agoIn the not so distant future, we'll neither need sperm nor eggs from humans. We'll need is at least one person and a lab. You could grow your own sperm and eggs from pluripotent stemcells (which can be made from any cell, even skin cells). Inseminate the egg, put it into an artificial womb, and voila, no need for sex or even a partner. You could make your own child, same sex partners could have their own kid, and it would even be possible to have kids with DNA 4 parents. Maybe the best news for women would be, that they wouldn't have to deal with any of the evil that comes with pregnancy since that could be externalized. It would render the menstrual cycle futile and push research into its elimination without side effects to the forefront.
- alacombe 6y agoBrave New World, here we come !
- dang 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26495843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26495843
- Geee 6y agoIt would be possible to survive through extinction events with this kind of technology. Or to populate other planets. You would need just cryopreserved embryos and a mechanical womb. And some kind of robotic mother.
- zionic 6y agoNetflix did this.
- imbnwa 6y agoSo did HBO
- bpodgursky 6y agoThe Songs of Distant Earth had this as a backstory.
- ycombigator 6y agoI'm guessing this ends with someone being offered a choice of colourful pill...
- jpollock 6y agoNice to see progress being made in this. I've been wondering what the next step would be after seeing the lamb in the artificial womb. https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15112 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15112