Will preganancy become something machines do?

As a scifi addict, this is something I am expecting. Actually, the ability to gestate a foetus outside the body.

Pregnancy is, by far, the most extreme condition that can be called normal. It puts an amazing amount of stress on the body, it can even kill.

"It (a lamb) hasn’t been born yet, but here it is, at 111 days’ gestation, totally separate from its mother, alive and kicking in a research lab in Philadelphia. It is submerged in fluid, floating inside a transparent plastic bag, its umbilical cord connected to a nexus of bright blood-filled tubes. This is a foetus growing inside an artificial womb. In another four weeks, the bag will be unzipped and the lamb will be born.

...this is not a substitute for full gestation. The lambs didn’t grow in the bags from conception; they were taken from their mothers’ wombs by caesarean section, then submerged in the Biobag, at a gestational age equivalent to 23-24 weeks in humans. This isn’t a replacement for pregnancy yet, but it is certainly the beginning.

who work with extremely premature babies at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). After three years of tweaking, their latest prototype is designed to give babies born too soon a greater chance of survival than ever before."

So, whaddya ya think, Neo?

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeand...look-foetus-real-time-artificial-wombs-future

 

I think these things might be useful and I support their implementation.

 

I thought for sure this would get some discussion going.

 

I think at some point birth control will be so good (male and female), that the only pregnancies are planned pregnancies

 

OK here I go. In a limited sense this technology could be useful at some far distant point in time when it is perfected in terms of potentially assisting women who can't conceive or carry a baby to term themselves. In effect it removes the need for human surrogates who are often difficult and expensive to locate.

On the downside - it opens up the possibility for a 'designer baby' industry on a massive scale not otherwise possible for any purpose. Lastly I can see certain conservative jurisdictions in the US for instance insisting (or at least trying to insist) that any woman wanting an abortion instead undergo a procedure that 'transfers' the embryo to a State controlled artificial womb - should that become a medically viable procedure as well.

Lots of disturbing options there.

 

at that time they could do that, so if anti-choicers really want to force a baby to be born, this would be the way

as the cells would be removed at the fathers request and grown in a lab at the fathers expense

 

Pregnancy might be perceived as 'extreme' stress on the body but it's the normal/natural process of humans...a long evolved process. It's the survival of the species. If we are going to machine-churn living beings, what will they be...diverse natural genetics or custom-created genes? After all, why go through all the effort to machine-create living beings if we don't make them 'better'? At some point in this scenario 'humans' cease to exist and 'others' take over.

At my age I never thought the day would come when society was looking for ways to stop having sex?! Thank goodness I had a healthy dose of the 60's!!

 

Great question, I've been pondering that question for decades. My take is that each generation will 'push the envelope'. Which means the end result would be designer genetics.

Which also means we could become a number of different species. For example, it would take a lot to make it so a human could spend most or all of his life in Space.

But I suspect this would mean more sex, not less. The Pill meant women didn't have to worry about pregnancy, so they had more sex. Women might remove their eggs entirely and freeze them. Assuming we get eventually get better at dealing with disease, the result might be a lot more sex.

 

We already have some selective breeding options like a white person only breeding with another white person. But if we create machines to produce so-called humans, start to finish, the value-added profit motive will give the consumer options on many aspects of the human; like male or female, approximate height, color of eyes, color of hair, etc. Sort of like one of those restaurants where the customer checks their entree, like hamburger, then checks all the condiments they want on the hamburger..mustard, ketchup, bacon, etc. In the future this will be done online, with credit card, and a newborn will arrive at their doorstep via FedX...

 

Cute.

Let's take a hypothetical. Let's say some future Lance Armstrong wants his kid to be a better cyclist than he is. The kids genetics could get massaged to the point where it might create problems or limitations elsewhere.

But on the plus side, we'd get a million Einsteins.

 

You also get a million Hitler's and other devious and evil types...

 

That sounds like Star Trek, and a lot of other shows.

If you've got a billion geniuses, evil gets a lot harder to sneak in the back door.

Give you a specific example. If only PHDs could vote, Liz Warren would be our next president. Trump would never have gotten within a country mile.

The flaw in the reasoning is that most people are not psychopaths.

 

It only takes one, in a nation with a dictatorship, where they research and create what they believe to be 'superior' beings...like for example creating 'superior' soldiers who just happen to have the propensity to kill...

 

Soldiers will be passe, drones...

I still to don't see how you get a dictator past millions of geniuses..

 

Drones serve a purpose but I'm thinking there will continue to be boots on the ground. Some radical dictator will try to create a superior race...

 

The premise is we already have a superior race, and "I still to don't see how you get a dictator past millions of geniuses.."

 

Then you don't know how dictators maintain their power...

 

I refuse to do it

 

I've been talking about how they get there. Or in this case, don't get there...

Life isn't like Star Trek.

 

I wonder how this will affect how society views the morality of abortion.


related thread: fetus inside a tank hypothetical

 

Year but who can wait 15-18 years for your 'supermen' to reach maturity, during which time they all have to be fed and raised by 'someone'. The cost would be astronomical not to mention your enemies have 20 plus years to catch on to your Dr Evil master plan and prepare. So country B across the road simply recruits and trains large numbers of volunteers and has a much larger and well trained army ready a decade before you do. Not to mention super soldiers are just superior soldiers not Supermen in the classic sense so even if they kill 10 of the enemy for every one of their own lost its still a losing proposition in terms of money, rescues and effort.

 

if someone was found to have a million Hitler's growing in a lab, wonder if the choice would be to abort the process

 

Who was worse? Hitler, Stalin or Mao in the Evil Olympics?

 

I disagree...I continue to suggest when the time comes to create humans via machines, and the technology exists to alter their genetic code, while there can be good outcomes from this capability there will also be those who use it for evil outcomes...

 

They're not going to abort something they are concocting on purpose for evil reasons...