There are many talks about artificial wombs and why it’s bad for our world and the bad effects that could ruin our society. But today I want to talk about it from a different perspective. I want to talk about why we need artificial womb research long before the whole “artificial womb” thing.
Artificial womb research is crucial in the near term to SUPPORT pregnancy. There are 3 big reasons why we really need more artificial womb research.
Help premature babies survive:
We have taken enormous strides to help premature babies survive. A full-term pregnancy is between 37 to 42 weeks, but when a baby is born before 30 weeks, they are called premature babies. We are constantly developing new tools and making advanced technologies to help moms and babies, like new kinds of incubators and “liquid ventilation”. If a baby is born prematurely, then we could put them into the artificial womb. This can allow extremely premature babies to develop their lungs and survive. We can use liquid ventilation where babies can breathe the fluid, just like inside a mother’s uterus. This is a big step that can help a lot of premature babies survive and save many families. No matter what we say about these technologies, all of these are part of a puzzle that’s going to help us let babies grow and survive outside of a uterus.
Grow organs for organ transplants:
When we talk about growing organs, we think of a cyborg kind of situation where all of our body parts are changed with tech and chips, but that’s not what it is… or where you’re growing full humans…. That’s not it at all. What this is about is just growing independent organs. Right now, there are 109,650 people on the waiting list for organ transplants just in the US. That number has gone way up in recent times and keeps going up. Almost 20 people die every day waiting for a transplant. But not only that depending on the organ, anywhere from 5 to almost 40% will actually reject their transplants. This is the problem that Dr. Jacob Hanna (recognized for developing the first bona fide synthetic embryos (also known as “complete embryo models”) from stem cells in the petri dish in mice and humans) is actually motivated to solve. The idea of growing organs for organ transplant is kind of like where you will only give a sample of your blood or DNA and then the doctors will be able to grow you a working organ from it that is exactly right for you. This will make sure that the body doesn’t reject their transplants and also we don’t need to find any donors for it. Dr. Jacob Hanna is trying to make this dream come to life.
Learn about development:
It doesn’t take much to understand that it’s hard to study humans, or any mammal, in utero. We have many scientific advance technologies like ultrasound or x-ray and many more things. We can take snapshots of organs inside our body. But none of this is anything like just being able to watch an embryo develop. Seeing something with our own eyes lets us observe in more detail and helps us understand something deeper.
In many research scientists use zebrafish embryo just because they are transparent and that allows us to understand what actually happens if we grow an embryo outside a uterus like on water. Then we can use that information to use it on some mammals’ development and eventually on humans. We still don’t have enough information about the uterus and how a baby grows. We are still learning many things about it and discovering new things every day. With artificial womb research, we can see this process of how a human body grows and how different parts of the body make the organs we can understand more. Overtime this can lead to something HUGE and make something that we never think was possible.
An option of artificial wombs
Having a working artificial womb is not necessary but knowing how it works is… We might not need an artificial womb anytime soon but we do need to understand it. We need to have that option available for all these reasons. There are many people who don’t want to get pregnant but they want to have a baby. There are people who want to have a baby and want to get pregnant but can’t do it. For them, having an option is nothing but magic and they will just jump on the chance of having a biological kid this way. Survey shows that In the United States alone, heterosexual women aged 15 to 49 years with no prior births, about 1 in every 5 (19%) are unable to get pregnant after one year of trying (infertility). Also, about 1 in every 4 (26%) women in this group have difficulty getting pregnant or carrying a pregnancy to term (impaired fecundity). These people are desperate to have their biological child and having an option for them is necessary and would be wonderful.
Pregnancy is an incredibly hard thing. And we humans have it particularly bad. We walk on two legs, so we have narrow hips. We have large brains, so we have huge heads. For us, giving birth is a painful and medically complicated process. Many never even try a 2nd time to have children after going through childbirth. Over 45% of women describe birth as traumatic. People lose hair and have permanent scarring. Shockingly 2-8% of women even tear from one hole to the other. That is scary… No matter if you get pregnant yourself, or if you adopt, or if you use surrogacy… It doesn’t matter, SOMEBODY has to go through pregnancy in order for a new kid to exist and that can be beautiful but it can be brutal as well.
Making this blog I found many things and everything I see I respect more and more to the people who ever got pregnant. It just feels like superhuman. We talk about getting pregnant like something normal but it’s actually not. It’s something that only love from a mom to its child can make come true. Seeing this we should have another option for this. It’s not like having artificial wombs mean making babies in a factory. It should be just an option. And we should have that option. Having this option is not something out of a horror sci-fi movie but more having this option is just having another way to do it. And for some people that way might be the best or only way.
