Artificial Wombs

Well, my approach would be to overthrow patriarchy so that technology would only ever be used to enhance women's lives, not to blight them.

It is an important step in the scientific route to an artificial uterus.

Nowadays, breakthroughs in transplant technology lead towards replacement organs, not the other way round. It will give important information about what is needed to sustain pregnancy in a uterus which is not the same tissue as the body to which it is attached.

So scientifically augmented uterus function is being studied and acted on in this way. Then you have to look at other steps towards other "repair" options (growing new tissue).

Obviously only then when you know how to make, site and support during pregnancy could you look at further options for novel siting.

If you think the actual work of scientists along this path is too dangerous (because of possible later misuse), then you are limiting research into women's reproductive health.

If you do not think these steps are necessary, grateful if you would post a more realistic scientific approach (that isn't sci fi, of course).

That's not an artificial womb though is it EW? It's a real one, transplanted into someone else.

I still think we need to define terms here...

People aren't saying scientists shouldn't be striving to help women. They're pointing out that as long as the world is controlled by men, technology is just as likely to be used to women's detriment than benefit.

The first transplant (in terms of the operation to place the new uterus) gas already taken place.

It took place in Turkey, using the uterus of a deceased donor transplanted into a woman who was born without one [http://rt.com/news/first-uterus-surgery-success-845/ link]]. It is not yet clear if a successful pregnancy can be sustained (the immune system issues are more complex than for other transplants).

But people here seem to be saying science should not be striving to assist women who need a new uterus because it's all a patriarchal conspiracy. I find that curious, and would take a completely opposite view that it would be an outrage if the possibilities of assisting women's reproductive health and functioning were not being researched, studied and advanced.

Yes, juuule, that's why I said "very very very rarely a woman actually manages to carry an ectopic pregnancy to (something close to)" although there was supposed to be a " term" after that final ")" so i can see why it was confusing.

ER - in the womb, a baby can hear rhythm but not pitch. So a baby hears the rhythm of his or her mother tongue. And I believe this can be tested in newborns, that they are already familiar with teh mother tongue.

But yes, for a long time babies can adapt and learn any language. In fact, people used to think it was about age 7 when children could no longer become effectively bilingual, and this is being revised upwards and upwards.

I still think though that there are serious issues with wombs not being inside women's bodies, and language would likely be one of them.

That's how I understood it, too, ER

Viz language, the baby comes out of the womb able to learn any language on earth. Within a few months, it has discarded the sounds unnecessary it its own language - so a French baby babbling, sounds different to an English one. But on day 1, they both have the same sounds from what I understand.

Tmesis
"Extrauterine pregnancy occurs in just nine in 100,000 births, when the baby develops outside the womb and embeds itself elsewhere in tissue.
In most ectopic pregnancies, the baby grows in fallopian tubes. But Molly was attached to the ligament tissue in the abdominal cavity."

Baby grew outside mothers womb

so it seems, while rare, it is possible

Hmmmm

Shall I put the test tubes away and tell DH we're going to have to hold fire? Shame.

You may have been wacthing body matters, I have been watching the film Junior with Arnie which I feel is a reliable source of up-to-the-minute cutting edge science info on this topic

Well, not really. Think about ectopic pregnancies -- very very very rarely a woman actually manages to carry an ectopic pregnancy to (something close to). 99.9999999% of the time she either has a termination or she dies. The uterus is a clever thing that stops you bleeding to death when a placenta attaches to it, and as a man lacks a uterus he'd be more likely to go down the bleeding-to-death-in-agony path. He'd also need to have been castrated first to suppress his own hormone levels and then have some kind of wacky HRT that they haven't invented yet.

So you could get it so attach to a man's circulatory system?

Et voila!

All getting a bit Borg here now...

Oooh really that's interesting. Thinking about it that makes sense rather than the other way around. Does make me remember that "parasites" comment ages ago that caused such a kerfuffle!

So you need to persuade the placenta to attach to something external then? I should know this I've had two babies

Embryos make their own placentas (placentae?) and umbilical cords. They are a part of the embryo not a part of the parent.

How do they replicate the umbilical cord? That would be a bit of a problem I would imagine! While the embryo is running on it's own steam so to say it's less of a problem (although still fairly tricky I imagine!).

Tmesis I am still foxed by your question

Just to clarify, artificial wombs actually exist, although in a primitive state. Currently scientists in separate experiments have been able to get fertilised eggs to implant in the artificial lining for up to 10 days. They are restricted by the HFEA to only experimenting with human embryos up to 14 days but as there is initial promise a number of teams are hoping to try for much longer with animal embryos.

Tmesis excellent questions to think about. I am going to think about them!

yes I agree with you that the reality is this is a very long way off and will be terribly expensive.

I do wonder if it were being developed what sort of reaction there would be from the public? Whether people would be keen or see it as interference. Would there be calls to ban it? I guess it would depend on what the press decided to think of it, and what it could actually do.

I think that there are three ideas -- the two you've outlined plus a "what do the terms in which this tends to be discussed tell us about the way in which women are viewed" (which sort of cuts across both).

And the thought experiment itself shades into a question about "Are women's life choices/chances restricted specifically by their (actual or potential) role as gestators of children (so that patriarchal attitudes to women have, to a great extent, origins in women's reproductive status), or do patriarchal attitudes towards women have a separate origin so that, women's reproductive status is the main thing they have protecting them in a patriarchal society?" Or something like that, anyway. I suspect the answer may be "both, to an extent", although that seems paradoxical.

You said about reality vs them suddenly being freely available and my brain travelled down the path of reality...

Ah you're being too practical there trills

I have clearly read too much SF...

I'm not put off the whole topic, just responding to one post there.

I agree that there are definitely two very different arguments.

If someone invented an artificial womb tomorrow then it would have to go through years of testing (on animals to start with), and the first tests on humans would presumably have to be on very premature babies who would die otherwise. This in itself would be a difficult test to interpret, as there's likely to be something different about babies that are born very prematurely (either something different in them or something different in the environment they have grown in) compared to the average baby that is not born prematurely.

The initial usage would not be for growing babies from scratch, it would be for the cases where people had trouble incubating full-term, simply because that's where we have "spare" babies to test it on.

Clearly "spare" is not the right word here, but for an untested technology you need embryos/foetuses that:
1 - don't have a better option
2 - are wanted
This rules out using embryos created during IVF for testing simulating an entire pregnancy because if you have gone through IVF and you have the choice of using your own womb or borrowing one from a surrogate or using a machine that may or may not work you will choose a real womb (for now, anyway).

I think that there are two ideas here

The idea about this happening in practice in the real world now and the fact that it would be hugely expensive and only available to a few etc which a lot of people have made good points about

And a thought experiment about what might happen if this were freely available tomorrow, which a lot of people have also talked about

They are two different conversations really, although interesting to explore both here

Trills it is a shame you let one posters posts put you off the whole topic.

Mother nature gave women power over reproduction for a reason and that reason is she knows we can handle it.

I'm afraid I can't take any arguments seriously (no matter how sensible they may be) if this is in the middle of them.