At Juntendo University of Tokyo, Dr. Yoshinori Kuwabara and his team of scientists have successfully removed goat fetuses from mother goats and placed them in tanks of amniotic fluid stabilized at goat body temperature, while connecting the baby goat's umbilical cord to machines that pump in nutrients and dispose of waste.
The purpose of Dr. Kuwabara's research is to provide a safe home for human fetuses prematurely expelled from the mother's womb. According to the British Guardian newspaper, it is expected that such methods capable of sustaining a child for the full nine months "will become reality in a few years."
Meanwhile, at Cornell University's Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility, Dr. Hung-Ching Liu and her team of scientists have been approaching the problem of fetal out-of-womb survival from the other side. She is developing a full artificial womb that can receive a just-conceived embryo -- with the hope that it will successfully gestate for the full nine months.
I find this somewhat creepy. From a technical point of view, I'm sure this is scientifically exciting stuff. But the notion of "creating" children in such a device makes my skin crawl. This is another example of mankind's scientific knowledge and abilities outrunning our ability to fully grasp the moral and ethical implications.
Imagine -- cloned embryos, gestated in these devices, perhaps without legal standing, being used as "farms" for the development of organs for harvesting. That sounds ghoulish, but I'm not so sure it's that far-fetched in our world today.
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