An extinction level impact will occur in 25 years, what options does life on Earth have?

[Gingerbread Demon]

It would also make us extremely dependent on the technology and there would be a temptation to meddle with the genome of the foetuses in a similar manner to that described in Brave New World - although gene-editing techniques such as CRISPR, not imagined by Huxley, could be used. Might we be tempted to create supermen or compliant drones?

Or even Gattacca

 

[jackoverfull]

It would also make us extremely dependent on the technology and there would be a temptation to meddle with the genome of the foetuses in a similar manner to that described in Brave New World -

can’t see what this had to do with artificial womb technology: it’s a totally different thing from gene editing.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

can’t see what this had to do with artificial womb technology: it’s a totally different thing from gene editing.

Get 'em while they're young and vulnerable. Much easier to tinker with a single fertilised cell, a blastula, or a developing embryo in an artificial womb than inside a fully differentiated organism consisting of trillions of cells.

Or even Gattacca

Gattaca - should have been named Gauaca as each codon is a nucleotide triplet and uracil substitutes for thymine in messenger RNA? But, yes, I believe transhumanism is going to be a major ethical issue sooner than we are prepared for.

 

[jackoverfull]

Sure. And an artificial womb has nothing to do with it.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Well, if you say so. I can't be arsed to argue with you.

 

[jackoverfull]

Since you can’t explain how the two things would be connected...

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I did but apparently it wasn't enough for you. An artificial womb is not a necessity but it's a helpful enabler for practising gene manipulation. Doing gene manipulation of an embryo inside a human being is much more difficult. Of course, manipulation in vitro is also a possibility prior to implantation.

 

[jackoverfull]

Ok, that makes sense, thanks. Not a necessity, as you say, but can be useful, sure.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Yes, I was merely extrapolating how artificial womb technology might be an enabler for transhuman modification. Most women might not be too keen on serving as vessels to bring such experiments into the world. Sourcing human egg and sperm cells is probably relatively easy - obtaining sperm cells being much easier, of course. Creating gametes by inducing interphase and two-stage meiosis in stem cells is another possibility and there's always somatic cell cloning - although at present I think it still suffers from the problem of retaining accumulated defects and telomere degradation as seen, for example, in Dolly the sheep and her sisters.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Hey we can have borg babies if we have artificial wombs, we'd also have to have nanotech take a giant leap but heck why not while we are all imagining stuff.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Biochemistry and life are indeed nanotechnology as that is simply a measure of the distance scale at which it happens -- 10^-9 m, the size of molecules.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Funny old thread this because I was reading this an ad on another browser tab came on for the Amazon production of Greenland about an ELE event

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

The Wiki page on artificial wombs is an interesting starting point for those interested in the technology, particularly its philosophical implications.

Bioethics

The development of artificial uteri and ectogenesis raises bioethical and legal considerations, and also has important implications for reproductive rights and the abortion debate.

Artificial uteri may expand the range of fetal viability, raising questions about the role that fetal viability plays within abortion law. Within severance theory, for example, abortion rights only include the right to remove the fetus, and do not always extend to the termination of the fetus. If transferring the fetus from a woman's womb to an artificial uterus is possible, the choice to terminate a pregnancy in this way could provide an alternative to aborting the fetus.

There are also theoretical concerns that children who develop in an artificial uterus may lack "some essential bond with their mothers that other children have".

Gender equality and LGBT

In the 1970 book The Dialectic of Sex, feminist Shulamith Firestone wrote that differences in biological reproductive roles are a source of gender inequality. Firestone singled out pregnancy and childbirth, making the argument that an artificial womb would free "women from the tyranny of their reproductive biology."

Arathi Prasad argues in her column on The Guardian in her article "How artificial wombs will change our ideas of gender, family and equality" that "It will [...] give men an essential tool to have a child entirely without a woman, should they choose. It will ask us to question concepts of gender and parenthood." She furthermore argues for the benefits for same-sex couples: "It might also mean that the divide between mother and father can be dispensed with: a womb outside a woman’s body would serve women, trans women and male same-sex couples equally without prejudice."

Artificial womb - Wikipedia

It does appear that there is ongoing research into the technology, although I suspect it's many years off for humans. It would require legal changes in countries such as the UK to extend the 14-day limit for the development of human embryos outside the body.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

The Wiki page on artificial wombs is an interesting starting point for those interested in the technology, particularly its philosophical implications.

Artificial womb - Wikipedia

It does appear that there is ongoing research into the technology, although I suspect it's many years off for humans. It would require legal changes in countries such as the UK to extend the 14-day limit for the development of human embryos outside the body.

Fascinating.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

We have got a bit side-tracked from what to do in case of an ELE. There is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on Spitsbergen but that seems like a potential single point of failure (SPOF) to me. Wipe that out and we have nothing to fall back on. If artificial womb technology were available, we could potentially preserve animal gametes and embryos as well to allow mammal lines to be repopulated but I'm not sure how long these would remain viable in cryonic storage. Using suitable brood hosts from related species is another possibility. We're quite a way from reconstructing DNA and any necessary ancillary epigenetic proteins or other molecules directly from information stored as binary code, of course.